Language/French/Grammar/subjects-objects-pronouns

French Subjects, Objects, and Pronouns

A sentence is made up of a subject (the person or thing that makes the verb) and can have an object (the thing that we do). Depending on the languages the order between the subject (S), the verb (V) and the object (O) may vary.

Consider broadening your understanding by checking out these related lessons: Possessive determiners, Omission of the article, Polite Form & Fractions.

English

English is primarily a language with the following order: subject-verb-object or S-V-O.

Consider these the 2 following sentences:

subject	verb	object
Jean	throws	the ball
Cécile	studies	French

French

French is also (mostly) S-V-O. Consider these sentences:

subject	verb	object
Jean	lance	la balle
Cécile	étudie	le français

On the other hand in French, when we replace the object noun (la balle or anglais, in the above examples) with an object pronoun (la, le, l', les), the object pronoun moves in front of the verb, which makes the sentence Structure S-O-V:

Subject	Object (Pronoun)	Verb	Meaning
Jean	la	lance	Jean throws it
Cécile	l'	étudie	Cécile studies it

Note also that a subject pronoun can be used:

• Il la donne.

He gives it.

• Elle l'apporte.

She brings it.

Other Lessons

• Marked use of tu
• Plurals of nouns ending in –ou
• Intransitive verbs and auxiliary “être”
• Directly transitive verbs
• Categories of Nouns in French
• Differences in the use of numbers in French and English Ordinal number abbreviations
• Reciprocal se and cases of potential ambiguity
• Adjectives agreeing with just one noun
• Well Better Worse
• Homophones
• Adjectives with complements
• Present Tense
• Use of the definite article to indicate a habitual action
• Coordination of stressed pronouns
• Comparative and superlative forms of adverbs