Needing help with indirect complement pronouns!

Hi,

I find French indirect complement pronouns (esp. those that concern people) incredibly confusing. For example,

a) Je vais donner ces fleurs à Kim --> Je vais les lui donner.
b) Je parle à Keisha --> Je lui parle.

BUT

b) C'est grâce à Marcel que tu es arrivé --> C'est grâce à lui.
c) Michael s'est beaucoup attaché à la jeune fille qui le garde --> Michael s'est beaucoup attaché à elle.

Could you explain to me when I should use indirect pronouns (lui/leur) and when I should use tonic pronouns (elle, lui, etc.)? Thank you in advance!

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on April 22, 2012 at 6:59am

This is indeed quite a complex subject. However, the following might help:

(1) you use one of the 'preceding' pronouns (technically called "clitic" pronouns) before the verb whenever there is actually a verb and it has 'somewhere to go'. In "grâce à...", the expression doesn't actually include a verb.

(2) In practice there are one or two restrictions on combinations of clitic pronouns which means that they don't always have 'somewhere to go' even though you might logically expect them to.

Now, in (2) an important restriction is that "me/te/se/nous/vous" are not combined with "lui/leur" (whereas "le/la/les" are). So what this means is that in your example (c) we might logically expect "*se lui est attaché", but it turns out that "se" and "lui" are not generally compatible. Similarly: "Marie se compare à elle", not "*Marie se lui compare".

Another important rule to bear in mind is that pronouns from the same 'list' aren't combined (where "me/te/se/nous/vous", "le/la/les", "lui/leur" form three 'lists' for our purposes). So e.g. once you've used "me", then "te" has nowhere to go. So to say: "He's already presented me to you", you might expect logically to say "*Il me t'a déjà présenté". But it turns out that you would end up saying "Il m'a déjà présenté à toi", because after you've used "me", the "te" has nowhere to go, so you have to use "toi" instead.

If you're thinking this is a bit complicated... well, yes unfortunately it is! But you do get used to it after a while-- promise! I also don't think you need to get toooo paranoid about all these intricacies to begin with. If you were to say "Il me t'a déjà présenté" in a basic exam or when talking to a French friend, I don't think anybody would think it was the most terrible blunder in the world. It happens not to be what French people say, but it still shows a basic grasp of pronouns and an ability to apply basic logic.