FREN 3051 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Possessive, Possessive Determiner, Preposition And Postposition
Document Summary
In english we may use an apostrophe and an s to show that something belongs to someone. In french, however, because an apostrophe is only used to replace a letter that is omitted due to elision, "s is not used to show possession. French uses a different word order than the one we are accustomed to, and possessive adjectives and pronouns also follow a different set of rules. The preposition de (of) is used to express relationship and possession. If the sentence requires de and has two or more nouns, de (or d"before a vowel) is repeated before each noun. Although de can be used to demonstrate possession of a person or a thing, the idiom tre (to belong to) is usually used to show possession of a thing (not a person). Possessive pronouns are used to replace a possessive adjective + a noun. The pronoun must agree in number and gender with the noun it replaces.
