Quel pronom ? Le déterminant et la construction décident

Unité GR-52 · campagne 3 · avant l'ordre et la place : choisir le bon pronom.

The pronoun pages that follow each teach one pronoun — y, en, lui/leur — and one order. This page comes before them and answers the question a speaker actually faces mid-sentence: here is a noun group I want to replace — which pronoun? The answer is almost never in the noun. It is in the two words that open the group: a preposition, if there is one, and otherwise the determiner.

Start from the whole group, not from the noun

A pronoun replaces a whole group: the determiner and the noun (des questions), or a preposition, a determiner and a noun (à ses questions). The same noun can come back as three different pronouns depending on what opens its group — which is why "questions takes en" is a rule that works on one line and fails on the next.

The third line is the one learners get wrong after the first: having just said j'en ai about des questions, it is tempting to say j'en ai répondu. But répondre à puts a preposition in front of the group, and a preposition overrides the determiner — ses no longer matters.

Two questions, in this order

1. Is there a preposition in front of the group? Then the preposition decides, whatever determiner follows it:

• à + a thing or an idea → y — participer à, penser à, s'habituer à, répondre à.
• a place (à, en, dans, chez, sur, sous + place) → y — and a place you come from (de + place) → en.
• de + a thing → en — avoir besoin de, parler de, s'occuper de, se souvenir de.
• à + a person, after a verb of giving or telling (parler à, donner à, téléphoner à, écrire à) → lui / leur (me, te, nous, vous for the speakers themselves).
• de + a person, and à + a person after penser, s'intéresser, faire attention → the preposition stays, with a tonic pronoun after the verb: je parle de lui, je pense à elle.

2. No preposition — a direct object? Then the determiner decides:

• known, specific — le, la, les, a possessive (mon, ses…), a demonstrative (ce, cette…) → le, la, l', les.
• new, an amount, a number — un, une, des, du, de la, de l', deux, trois…, beaucoup de, quelques… → en.

The decision table

Look at the voiture line: the group is de la voiture, and la is a definite determiner — yet the pronoun is en, because de comes first. The same happens with à ses questions. Check for a preposition before you look at the determiner.

Same noun, two determiners, two pronouns

With no preposition, switching the determiner switches the pronoun — the noun stays the same:

The meaning of each determiner — why le is "known" and du is "an amount" — is on the P48 page Qu'est-ce qu'un déterminant ? Le sens de chaque famille. The pronoun simply carries that choice forward.

En and the number: say it again — except in the negative

En stands for the noun; it does not carry the quantity. In the affirmative, the number or quantity word is said again after the verb:

In the negative, the number goes: there is nothing left to count. Tu as une trousse ? — Non, je n'en ai pas. Not je n'en ai pas une — keep un/une only to insist, and then with seul: je n'en ai pas un seul. To say "none at all", use aucun(e): je n'en ai aucune.

The errors this page is for

If your first language is Russian

Russian answers Есть? with Есть or Нет and leaves the object out. French will not: a oui or non that keeps the verb needs the pronoun. Tu as des questions ? — Oui, j'ai. → Oui, j'en ai. The empty slot a Russian speaker leaves is exactly where en, y or le belongs.

A few verbs change their construction between the two languages, and the French one decides: помогать кому is indirect in Russian, but aider quelqu'un is direct (je l'aide); звонить кому matches téléphoner à (je lui téléphone).

Once the pronoun is chosen, two questions remain: in what order two pronouns go (P49.pronoun-systems.04 and .05), and where the chain sits in each tense. The items below practise the choice alone.

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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.

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