Chaînes de pronoms : négation et passé composé

Unité GR-22 · campagne 12 · je ne le lui ai pas donné — la phrase assemblée.

Chains with a pronominal verb (je ne m'en suis pas souvenu) and the blocked me + lui are on Me, te, se, nous, vous : un pronom, deux fonctions — et les verbes pronominaux.

Where the whole chain goes in every tense and structure — présent, passé composé, modal + infinitive, imperative — is on Où va le pronom ? Une seule règle, cinq cadres.

This closing unit of the pronoun pillar adds nothing new to the clitic table. It teaches assembly: what happens when a two-pronoun chain from GR-18/19 meets negation, the passé composé, or both at once. The layout is rigid:

Three consequences to internalise:

1. The chain is unbreakable. Ne stands before it, never inside it: je ne le lui ai pas donné — nothing can slip between le and lui.
2. In the passé composé, the chain sticks to the auxiliary, and pas lands right after that auxiliary: elle ne les leur a pas données, nous ne lui en avons pas parlé.
3. Elision still fires inside the machine: *je ne **te l'*ai pas encore envoyé — le becomes l' before ai, and ne becomes n' before a vowel-initial pronoun (il n'y en a plus).

Notice the second example in point 2: les leur a pas données. The preceding-COD agreement from GR-14 still applies — the chain does not switch it off, because les is a COD standing before the verb.

Russian negation is a single free-floating не; French negation is a frame, and the pronoun chain lives entirely inside the frame's first half. Build the sentence in slot order — subject, ne, chain, auxiliary, pas, participle — and every combination in the practice falls out mechanically.

Going further

Every frame, not only the passé composé. The slot table above is one of five frames. The same chain moves with the frame — before the infinitive after a modal (je ne peux pas te le dire), behind the verb in the affirmative imperative (dis-le-moi) — and the full set, each with its negative, is on Où va le pronom ?.

Agreement survives the chain. A direct le / la / les anywhere in the chain makes the participle agree: Tes lettres ? Je ne te les ai pas encore renvoyées. En and the indirect pronouns never do: Je ne lui en ai pas donné.

The notebook's errors, all from one mistake — building the sentence word by word instead of slot by slot:

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Oui / non drill

A question, then two answers to write: the oui answer and the non answer, each with the complement replaced by its pronoun. Every answer is graded, and a wrong one names the rule it breaks.

The notebook's pairs

The questions from the notebook above, as a drill: write both answers, or build them from tiles, and each one comes back with the rule it breaks — or with Correct.

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