Le lui...

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on July 3, 2012 at 2:41am

OK, so firstly yes you're basically right about the meaning. (Maybe "asked of him" would be slightly closer, but the idea is essentially the same.) So, how do you end up with "le lui"? It's basically do to a combination of points.

(1) Recall that "le lui" essentially means "it to him/her", as in e.g.

Je le lui donne.

"I'm giving it to him/her"

But of course, what the French pronouns actually can stand for isn't tied to a particular English translation. In fact, lui effectively stands for à lui/elle, and can be used in lots of places where you'd logically expect to use the preposition à in French, regardless of what the actual English translation becomes.

(2) demander qch à qn = "to ask sth of/from sb"

With demander, it's common to use the preposition à, even though in English you would usually say "of/from". You may have learnt the construction demander à qn de faire qch, which is effectively a variant of this construction.

So, that accounts for the lui in this case. But what about the le?

(3) When comme is used to mean "as" introducing how known/predictable/observable etc a given situation is (or if you like, "linking understood knowledge about the situation to a description of the situation"), then you often use le in (formal) French.

Now I think about it, it's hard to give a very good definition of exactly what the circumstances are. But I think the category is best defined by example. I'm referring to cases such as these, where "comme"/"as" is basically used as an 'introduction' to a sentence:

"As you know, ..." = comme vous le savez, ...

"As I've already told you, ..." = comme je te l'ai déjà dit, ...

"As you can see, ..." = comme vous le voyez, ...

And so, the reason for the le here is essentially the same: you're using comme in this way to "introduce" what you're about to mention. If you like, it means "it" standing for "the general situation I'm about to mention".

Now, I should also point out that in informal usage, you will also find that the le is omitted in such cases, so don't be surprised if you don't always see it in such cases. But in formal or careful usage, I think it's fair to say that it's usually included.

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Permalink Reply by Jelena on July 3, 2012 at 9:53am

Merci beaucoup, Neil

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Permalink Reply by Pete Laubscher on July 3, 2012 at 11:08pm

 

"...linking understood knowledge about the situation to a description of the situation..."

 

French linguistics have a use in explaining the correspondence theory of epistemology?

 

 

 

 

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on July 4, 2012 at 12:17pm

I don't know (or want to know!) what the correspondence theory of epistemology is but I wouldn't find it surprising that any branch of linguistics should be  relevant to  epistemology since ,as I recall it used to be claimed that the  whole area of philosophy  had been taken over by the study of what words (what does "is" mean  a la Clinton) actually meant .

I think that was around the time of Bertrand Russell  and ,as I am vaguely aware that whole way of looking at philosophy fell into disrepute

What if I wanted to use "comme" in the context of say, a simile, would I still need to place "Le" somewhere even though the words after the "comme" lack a subject and has only a noun?

 

that would seem very surprising if that was the case .Can you come up with any example in english so that we could tell you if it could require a use of the "le" in a corresponding french phrase?

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Key StudentPermalink Reply by Peter En on July 4, 2012 at 1:41pm

For example:

 

I run my life like clockworks

I think it would be applying neil's definition where existing knowledge "my life" is linked with the description of "clockworks"

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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on July 4, 2012 at 1:58pm

Well in that case ("je mène ma vie comme un mouvement d'horloge") I don't think the use of "la (it would have to be "la" as it would refer to "vie") would be at all possible.

In any case ,if I have understood Neil's argument the usage would only apply with a "le" meaning "it" as a pure "it" and not as referring to any object (which can also be called "it" -if that makes sense)

On the other hand you could say " ma vie je la mène comme un mouvement d'horloge" but that wouldn't be an example of what I think you are getting at - just another way of saying the same thing as "je mène ma vie comme un mouvement d'horloge"

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Key StudentPermalink Reply by Peter En on July 4, 2012 at 9:07am

What if I wanted to use "comme" in the context of say, a simile, would I still need to place "Le" somewhere even though the words after the "comme" lack a subject and has only a noun?

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on July 4, 2012 at 4:11pm

The "le" has to be attached to a verb. If there's no verb, then there's absolutely no possibility of adding the "le". So for example, the following is fine:

Comme ton frère, je vais souvent à Paris.

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