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French Language

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  • Syntagme nominal = ‘noun phrase’ in English grammar. Commented Nov 8, 2025 at 12:20
  • 2
    In English, "I like some chocolate" (with some stressed) is a perfectly reasonable sentence. Commented Nov 10, 2025 at 1:41
  • Re: "an article began to be grammatically associated with the word" - this is also particularly noticeable when learning French - even from the very earliest lessons, new words are typically introduced with a definite article attached, for example next to a picture of the relevant object, stereotypical person, or abstract idea... then you're invited to use this new word in a sentence, either using the definite article as given, or sometimes replacing it with an indefinite article or number. Commented Nov 10, 2025 at 8:25
  • @Steve That may also be because introducing the word with an article allows to settle its gender, since the article carries the gender explicitly. Commented Nov 11, 2025 at 15:08
  • @Clovis almost certainly so, but the point is that regardless of the original intent, it also causes the definite article to be very closely linked to every new word learned for those whose learning experience works that way (which mine doesn't - I have great difficulty remembering grammatical gender of French words, because my English-trained brain prefers to discard the definite article as "irrelevant noise"). I'd imagine those who were brought up learning French pay much closer attention to those definite articles, treating them as much more closely associated with the following word. Commented Nov 11, 2025 at 17:48