La famille celui qui : celui que, celle dont, ceux qui…

Unité GR-21 · campagne 11 · « celui » : le nom disparaît, l'accord reste.

Once qui/que/dont are in place, French lets you drop the noun itself and keep only a pointer to it: Quel manteau ? — Celui que j'ai acheté hier. That pointer is the demonstrative pronoun, and it comes in four forms that copy the gender and number of the vanished noun:

The whole GR-20 machinery plugs in behind it, unchanged:

• celui qui — subject gap: Prends ceux qui te plaisent.
• celui que — object gap: le manteau ? Celui que j'ai acheté.
• celui dont — de gap: Ces photos ? Celles dont je t'ai parlé.
• celui de — possession: Ma valise est plus lourde que celle de Paul. (Russian says чем у Паши; French repeats the pointer instead.)

One structural rule keeps the family honest: celui never stands alone. It must be completed — by a relative (qui/que/dont), by de + noun, or by the suffixes -ci/-là (celui-ci, celui-là, "this one / that one"). A bare celui at the end of a sentence is ungrammatical; if nothing follows, you want celui-là.

For DELF B2 this family is high-yield: definitions (ceux qui travaillent régulièrement réussissent), comparisons (celle de Paul), and picking items out of a set (celui que je préfère) all run through it, in speech and in the written argument alike. The practice makes you track the vanished noun's gender and number while choosing the right relative behind the pointer — two decisions per blank, fused into one reflex.

Going further

When there is no noun at all: ce qui, ce que, ce dont. Celui points back to a noun; when the thing has no noun — "what", "the thing that" — French uses the neuter ce:

Celui-ci / celui-là also contrast two things already named — "the latter / the former": J'ai deux offres ; celle-ci paie mieux, celle-là est plus proche.

Ceux qui for people in general is the standard way to state a rule in a DELF essay: Ceux qui lisent beaucoup écrivent mieux.

The errors to watch.

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