Chaînes de pronoms : négation et passé composé

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

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.

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