Help with the uses of 'de'

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on July 14, 2011 at 4:40pm

Confusingly, there are a couple of cases where you get 'de' before an infinitive. The first is when you would have got 'de' "anyway". For example, in French, content de means "happy with". It's one of many cases where French uses de with an adjective, whereas in English one would tend to say "with". And French often allows a verb to be used in such cases. So in French, content de travailler would mean "happy with working", "happy to work". Superficially, you have "de" followed by a verb, although in reality it's not a special construction: a noun etc could have followed "de" instead of the verb.

 

Then there are another set of cases where "de" before the verb does actually have a special function to 'introduce' the verb. In this sense, it actually functions in a very similar way to English "to" ("to work", "to swim" etc). These cases of "de" having a special function before a verb actually fall into a couple of subcategories:

 

- where one verb becomes the object of another verb, de is often required before the "second" verb. This is particularly common when the subject of the first verb isn't necessarily the subject of the second. So for example, "I allow him to swim" = "Je lui permets de nager".

- where de isn't strictly necessary, but is introduced because it "sounds better"/makes the verb stand out from the rest of the sentence a bit more. It's commonly used

(a) after a few 'linking' phrases such as ainsi que ("as well as"), plutôt que ("rather than");

(b) when an infinitive is the subject of the sentence, particularly in so-called "clef" sentences, or sentences that are "switched round". So typically sentences of the time "What I want is ...", "What I decided was ..." etc.

 

So examples of these cases where de is optional (but common):

 

"I want to sleep rather than work" = Je veux dormir plutôt que de travailler.

"What I want is to work less" = Ce que je veux, c'est de travailler moins.

 

Or another example, where the verb "stands on its own" from the rest of the sentence. In everyday speech, it would be very common to insert the "de" in this case too:

 

(De) travailler si tard, ça me paraît impossible.

"Working that late, it seems impossible to me."

 

Re your last question, de always merges with le when le is an article (i.e. basically speaking, when it is used to mean "the" before a noun, or when du is used to mean "some"). But when le is a pronoun (or put another way, when de le comes before a verb), then they never merge. So for example:

 

"He decided to do it" = Il a décidé de le faire.

 

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Key StudentPermalink Reply by Peter En on July 15, 2011 at 4:09am

Thanks so much for that! If possible, could you correct the following sentences with 'de'

I am certain there are a lot of grammar mistakes with the sentences, but I've highlighted the bits with 'de' as well to indicate what i've tried to do

This is a sentence in a review I have to do for "Les Choristes":
Les étudiants, au début se ne comportent pas, se sont remplissent de l’espoire à la fin du film
"The studants, at first do not behave, fill themselves with hope at the end of the film"

Le film ressemble plus à un classique du genre par une maitre de cinématographie qu’à un premier début de Barratier.    

"The film resembles more of a classic of it's genre by a master of film making rather than Barratier's first debut"

I tried to use 'de' to indicate that the classic is a possessive of the genre... i'm not sure if i am to use 'son'

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Key StudentPermalink Reply by Peter En on July 15, 2011 at 4:28am

sorry for a double post- I'm in the middle of writing it and new things keep popping up~:
To continue, this time i've attempted to use the 'to' meaning of 'de' as well as the gerund(participle present) and the indirect object...
"Mathieu change une étudiant défavorise, Morhange, lui encourageant de chanter"
Mathieu changes a disadvantaged student, Morhange, encouraging him to sing'

I'm most concerned about the participle present as well... everytime i use it i seem to have it crossed out by my teacher

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on July 15, 2011 at 6:43am

The present participle per se is fine, there are just a couple of other things to note.

 

Be careful of the spelling of "défavorisée": it has an accent on the end. Plus, because it's feminine in this case, you add an extra -e (indeed, you also do for "étudiante"). Maaaybe "transforme" would be clearer in meaning than "change", but it's not wrong per se.

 

Then, be careful with the construction: verbs like "encourager" generally use "à", not "de". And the person being encouraged is the direct object, meaning you use le/la, not lui. So, your sentence becomes:

 

Mathieu change/transforme une étudiante défavorisée, l'encourageant à chanter.

 

Other verbs of "encouragement" (notably pousser, mener, inciter) use a similar construction.

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Key StudentPermalink Reply by Peter En on July 16, 2011 at 5:04pm

thanks for that- I have one last question however:
Could you please check the following sentence in regards to using de after plutot...

Christophe Barratier utilise la bande-son comme un thème central plutôt qui d’un peu technique de mise-en-scène. 

When I translate that into english, I get an incomplete sentence: "Christophe Barratier uses the sound track as a central theme rather than a small technique of mise-en-scene" its missing the 'as'

and another thing, i was really struggling with the tenses of 'utiliser'- I didn't know whether to use it in the imparfait (in the sense that it's a past action that was completed- but there being no indication of when it was completed, would be suitable over the use of passe compose) or in the present tense (I guess you can argue the case that he still uses it and hence it is present).

thank you

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on July 16, 2011 at 7:40pm

Just a couple of things again:

 

- be careful of plutôt que

- "un peu technique" means "a little bit technical", i.e. when describing something. To say "a small technique", I'd suggest something like "une technique mineure" (I confess I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "small" when applied to a technique)

- "utilise" is OK, although possibly "se sert de" would be slightly more idiomatic in this case

 

So your sentence would be something like:

 

Christophe Barratier utilise/se sert de la bande son comme thème central plutôt qu'une technique mineure de mise en scène.

 

If you think the missing "comme" is amibugous, you could say e.g. "et non pas pour produire un effet mineur de mise en scène", or break up the sentence and say "Il ne s'agit pas d'une technique mineure de mise en scène".

 

The present tense is fine, but you could also use the perfect or imperfect-- as you say, it depends on what focus you want to give. It's a subtle point, but choice of tense doesn't necessarily depend on the reality of when something happens, but on the focus that you want to give. At the end of a game show when the host says to the losing contestant "Let's see what was behind the curtain", the item is still actually there.

 

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