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Parallelism rule
Le photojournaliste danois .... Elle montre un jeune couple homosexuel dans l'intimité, et a été prise dans le cadre d'un sujet consacré aux discriminations contre les homosexuels en Russie.
By the structure of the sentence, the subject should be "Elle" because you have parallelism of "Elle montre" and "Elle a été".
However, for "un jeune couple" to be the subject is the only way to make sense of the passive voice of "a été prise" .
So apparently the writer above (Le Monde) did not obey the principle of parallelism. My question: is that bad practice, or is it normal with French locutions ?
Thanks beaucoup.
Replies to This Discussion
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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on -
Is there not a "une photo "or "la photo" somewhere in the sentence ?
Is that not what "elle " refers to?
I have now found the complete context :
Les résultats du 58e World Press Photo ont été annoncés le 12 février. C'est Mads Nissen, photojournaliste danois, qui remporte le premier prix. Son image, prise à Saint-Pétersbourg, montre un jeune couple homosexuel dans son intimité. Elle a été réalisée dans le cadre d'un sujet consacré aux discriminations faites aux homosexuels en Russie.
http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/visuel/2015/02/12/les-resultats-du-wo...
I guess "photo" (elle) is understood even though it is not explicitly written as such.
By the way the quote I found is different from yours in a quite a few ways but it must surely be the same one.
I wonder if errors crept in with the editing as "image " which could have been the subject is masculine
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Permalink Reply by Vedas on -
Hello,
the subject is "image (du jeune couple)" which is feminine so the agreement is correct both with the pronoun "elle" and with the past participles "prise" and "réalisée"
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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on -
oops, I forgot that "l'image" was feminine.("age" endings are mostly masculine ....)
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Permalink Reply by Vedas on
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yes it's true!
although here are some exceptions among common words: image, nage, page, plage, rage, cage
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EducatorPermalink Reply by George Hunt on -
We were told in school to memorize them in pairs :
"une rage dans la cage" ,"une nage sur la plage" and "une image sur la page" .
But the memory faded...........
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Permalink Reply by Vedas on
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always funny and interesting to know how foreigners are taught one's language.
I was never taught these pairs at school which in a way makes sense since the gender issue is not really a problem for natives -apart from exceptions when one can hesitate or when both are possible (après-midi)- as you tend to learn them naturally without thinking about it.
But ask a native if "haltère" is feminine or masculine a majority will say "une haltère" when it is" un haltère" or for "une tique" people tend to say "un tique"
Problems pop up when it comes to English words too. Normally English words should be used with the masculine gender. But "interview" for instance is sometimes masculine or feminine, in the latter case the reason is that it's close to the word "entrevue" which is feminine.
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Permalink Reply by Charles D on
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Actually, because of "the" all nouns in the English language are neutral. The language does not have genderized endings for the adjective.
The woman is strong.
The man is strong.
Of course "woman" and "man" have gender but that is because they are referring to the sex of a human. But what about "the person is strong"--same construction even when we don't know the sex.
The problem arises when the noun is translated into another language that does have gendered nouns and agreeing adjectives and adverbs, etc.
La dame est forte.
L(e)'homme est fort.
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