Language/French/Grammar/Constructions-which-do-not-allow-indirect-object-pronouns

Constructions which do not allow indirect object pronouns

A small set of verbs and adjectives in French look as if they take indirect objects because they are followed by the preposition à, but in fact they do not allow preceding me, te, se, nous, vous, lui, leur, and require stressed pronouns to follow à:

French	Il pense à Jean	II pense à lui (NOT *Il lui pense)
English	He is thinking of John	He is thinking of him
French	II fait allusion à Marie	II fait allusion à elle (NOT *Il lui fait allusion)
English	He is referring to Marie	He is referring to her
French	Elle aura affaire à Henri	Elle aura affaire à lui (NOT ""Elle lui aura affaire)
English	She will have to deal with Henri	She will have to deal with him
French	Ce sac est à Julien	Ce sac est à lui (NOT *Ce sac lui est)
English	This bag is juliens	This bag is his

The explanation for this behaviour seems to be that à can have two functions: to introduce indirect objects, and as an ordinary preposition. In the above examples, À is a preposition. Since lui, leur can only correspond to indirect objects lui, leur are not possible in these cases - only stressed pronouns can be used.

Other common verbs followed by à which behave similarly are:

French	English
en appeler à	appeal to
faire appel à	appeal to
avoir recours à	have recourse to
recourir à	have recourse to
faire attention à	pay attention to
faire allusion à	allude to
s'habituer à	get used to
revenir à	come back to
rêver à	dream of
songer à	think of
tenir à	be fond of
venir à	come to

The set of verbs which behave in this way is quite small. We have listed most of them here. When the phrase introduced by à in these cases refers to things, rather than people, pre-verbal y may replace it.

Verbs like these can be made reflexive or reciprocal by adding the appropriate forms lui(-même), elle(-même), etc., or l'un l'autre, etc.:

• Il pense à lui(-même)

He is thinking of himself

• Elles auront affaire les unes aux autres

They will have to deal with each other

Other Lessons

• Use of on
• The partitive article "du", "de l'", "de la" and "des"
• Inversion of subject and verb after some sentence initial adverbs
• Pronominal verbs used as passives
• Use of faire + partitive faire du, de la
• Location of adverbs modifying verb phrases
• Marked use of tu
• Adverbs ending in —ment derived from words no longer in the language
• Plurals of nouns ending in eu, au, eau
• L’on VS on
• Adjectives
• Negations
• "de" when an adjective precedes the noun
• Masculine Nouns Ending in ée
• "se faire" and "se laisser"