The adjective "grand"

Please excuse my "flood" of questions ! As a new forum member, I am excited by the possibilities

this site presents, and I am getting a few confusions "off my chest".

I know that, in general, adjectives come after the noun; and a few come before the noun.

I also know that a very few can come before or after the noun, altering their meaning completely,

My problem is the adjective "grand". Dictionary definitions will give "large; big; tall (in size)", they will also give "great; large (in stature/importance)".

What meanings are implied when a) it preceeds the noun, b) it follows the noun ?

My French teacher seems unable to understand the question !! I hope that I have put it clearly.

Any advice ?

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Permalink Reply by nonick on August 3, 2010 at 8:02pm

grand is always put before the noun, unless you use a relative pronoun.

For instance : "ce pont qui est grand" is equal to "ce grand pont"

but it's wrong to say "ce pont grand"...

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Permalink Reply by James H Smith on August 4, 2010 at 9:25am

C'est très clair.
Merci beaucoup.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on August 7, 2010 at 7:24am

There are a couple of extra points worth mentioning.

There's interestingly a case with the phrase grand homme, which has strong connotations of meaning "a great man" rather than a "tall man", to the extent that the phrase homme grand is used to mean "tall man". However, it's probably fair to say that this isn't a general rule, so if you look at other nouns, grand can generally go before as you'd expcet and keep the literal meaning of "tall" or "grown up" (e.g. un grand garçon, une grande femme etc).

Regarding what you mention about the relative pronoun, it's actually even a bit more general than that. There are various constructions, essentially where you don't just have a "simple" adjective + noun combination, where in general the adjective won't come before the noun, or where there's a tendency for it not to. For example, if you consider a phrase such as un plus grand disque dur vs un disque dur plus grand, the latter word order appears generally to be more common. And of course, there are cases such as un homme plutôt grand que petit, where you've essentially no choice...