The definite article instead of ce, cet,.....

Hello,

I wonder in what cases the definte article le or la are used instead of

Ce, cet, ces, cette.

Mon, ton, son, notre, votre, leur.

Ma, ta, sa, nos, vos, leurs.

Mes, tes, ses.

Are they used only when talking about parts of the body? Eg, J'ai mal a la tete. Why not ' ma tete?'

Thanks

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on October 16, 2011 at 4:09pm

Yes, parts of the body is the main case. French doesn't tend to use "mon", "ton" etc when it's obvious whose body part you're talking about.

And why not? Well, just because the pragmatics of whether or not the 'personal' determiners are used ("mon" etc in French, "my" etc in English) is actually slightly arbitrary, and there are cases where you will find a difference across languages.

A French speaker might equally ask why it is that an English speaker insists on emphasising so much that the body part 'belongs' to them. Or a French speaker might wonder why an English speaker says "He's in the bath", whereas to a French speaker the more logical solution is to say "He's in his bath". Or why does an English speaker insist of having "his" breakfast rather than just "the" breakfast-- after all everybody has breakfast, it's not just something that 'belongs' to that individual person...? In all of these cases, you could really invent logical arguments either way; each language happens to side one way or the other, fairly arbitrarily.

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Permalink Reply by Sarah on October 16, 2011 at 4:33pm

Thank you. Your explanations are very clear. So in all these examples that you provided you would use the words bath, breakfast, etc with the definite article , am I right?

Another famous example is 'I am putting on My coat.'

You said that parts of the body is the main case. Are these examples with breakfast, bath and coat another case of using the definite article in French instead of mon, ton, son, etc?

Thanks

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on October 17, 2011 at 7:15am

The breakfast and bath examples are ones where French would tend to work 'the other way round' to English. So for example, while in English people would tend to say "He's in the bath" and not "He's in his bath", in French, people would tend to say "Il est dans son bain" (rather than "Il est dans le bain").

I'm not sure your coat example is quite so good: I think "mon manteau" would be more or less as likely as "my coat" in English.

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Permalink Reply by Sarah on October 17, 2011 at 1:05pm

My coat example? It's not mine. :D I have heard many students whose native language is not English say; Why my coat and not just coat? I didn't mention it to compare English with French. Those who asked this question were not French either.