La chaîne d'accord article-adjectif-nom

Unité GR-09 · campagne 4 · un genre, toute la chaîne.

Everything the suffix units predicted now has to be spent: the gender and number of the noun propagate to every word attached to it. Décision is feminine, so the whole chain bends — une décision importante, ces décisions importantes. One noun, one lookup, then agreement is bookkeeping:

1. Fix the gender (suffix heuristics from GR-07/GR-08, or the dictionary).
2. Fix the number from the sentence.
3. Carry both across article, adjective(s), and any participle that joins the phrase later.

Two refinements complete the written chain at B2:

• des → de before a preposed plural adjective. When the adjective moves in front of the noun, des drops to de: des progrès remarquables but de beaux progrès, de vrais progrès. Adjective after the noun — des stays.
• bel, nouvel, vieil. Before a vowel or mute h, the masculine beau, nouveau, vieux take their liaison forms: un bel appartement, un nouvel ami, un vieil homme. The feminine is unaffected — une belle année.

A chain error is rarely one error: write un décision and important follows it into the ditch. The practice set therefore grades whole chains, not single words — including the comité / décision gender pair from GR-07, now dressed with adjectives.

Going further

Why the rule exists. An adjective has no gender or number of its own — it borrows the noun's, and the written agreement is how a reader sees which words belong to which noun. In une robe et un manteau noirs, the -s says both are black; without it, only the coat is. French hears almost none of this, so the chain carries the information in writing.

Minimal pairs. One change between the two sentences, and what it does:

The errors to watch.

From Russian and English. Russian agrees in gender, number and case — its chain is longer than the French one, so the discipline is familiar: новая машина, новые машины. Two things do not transfer. French has no neuter, so every noun is masculine or feminine. And Russian plural adjectives have no gender at all (новые for everyone), so nothing in Russian trains contents / contentes — or the rule that a mixed group is masculine. English agrees nothing: its adjectives never change.

The complete rule. A mixed group takes the masculine plural. Colours named after a thing are invariable (orange, marron, crème) — except rose, mauve, fauve, écarlate, pourpre, incarnat, which agree; a compound colour is invariable (des yeux bleu clair). Des → de before a preposed adjective, but not in the compound nouns that work as one word: des jeunes gens, des petits pois, des grands-parents.

The determiner at the head of the chain, and what it means, is on Qu'est-ce qu'un déterminant ? Le sens de chaque famille.

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