🗣️ 12. Determiners, pronouns and numerals

A French common noun in an argument position almost never stands alone: it takes a determiner. The rule is stricter than in English, where plural and mass nouns can be bare (I like dogs, I drink water); French needs an article (J'aime les chiens, Je bois de l'eau). The determiner also carries the gender and number that the noun itself often does not show in speech (11. Nouns). Pronouns stand for a noun phrase, and the personal ones come in two series: weak (clitic) forms bound to the verb in a fixed order, and strong forms that are free words. Numerals are the third closed class of the chapter. All three are small, frequent and irregular.

Determiners come first (§§1–7), then the pronouns (§§8–15), the UD annotation (§16) and Mova (§17). The syntax of relative clauses is in 25. Relative clauses, of questions in 26. Questions, of negation in 27. Negation.

Counts are from the UD 2.18 French treebanks, all files of each, made on 2026-11-06. GSD has 400 385 syntactic words; ParisStories (spoken) 42 789; Rhapsodie (spoken) 44 234. Unless a count is said to be by lemma, it is by lowercased surface form, because GSD's lemma column merges the personal pronouns (§16.3).

1. The articles

L' and de l' stand before a vowel or a mute h (l'homme, de l'huile); before an aspirated h the full form stays (le héros, la hache; 04. Connected speech: enchaînement, liaison, elision, the mute e and assimilation). Les and des have a liaison /z/ before a vowel (les amis /lezami/).

Contraction. After à and de the masculine singular and the plural definite article fuse: à + le → au, à + les → aux, de + le → du, de + les → des. The feminine and the elided forms do not (à la, de l'). The fusion is obligatory (*à le, *de le); it happens even with a name whose article is part of it (Le Havre → au Havre), and writers avoid it only by quoting the title (dans « Le Monde »). The relative lequel fuses the same way (auquel, duquel, §15). GSD has 11 022 such multiword tokens (du 4 390, des 3 298, au 2 477, aux 808, the rest relatives), each split into ADP + DET or ADP + PRON.

1.1 Definite

The definite article marks a referent identified by the context (Passe-moi le livre) or unique (la lune), and, far more widely than English the, the generic reading: Les chats sont des animaux, J'aime le café, La vie est belle. Other uses where English has no article or a possessive:

• a body part when the owner is clear (Il lève la main; §5);
• a unit of price or measure (trois euros le kilo, cent kilomètres à l'heure);
• days for a repeated event (le lundi "on Mondays") against the bare form for one occasion (Je pars lundi);
• languages and most names of countries and regions (le français, la Suisse, les États-Unis); after en the article drops with a feminine or vowel-initial name (en France, en Iran), and fuses for masculine ones (au Canada, du Japon);
• titles before a name (le docteur Martin).

1.2 Indefinite

Un, une introduce a new singular count referent (Il y a une maison au bout du chemin); des is their plural. There is no zero plural: *J'ai vu chiens. Des is not the plural of le: Il a acheté des fleurs "some flowers", Il a acheté les fleurs "the flowers". The article un is the numeral un; un seul or stress makes the number explicit (Il n'a pas un ami "not a single friend", against the plain Il n'a pas d'ami).

1.3 Partitive

Du, de la, de l' introduce an unbounded quantity of a mass noun: Je veux du pain, Elle boit de l'eau, Il faut du courage. The sequence du is two different things:

• Je viens du marché — the preposition de + the article, "from the market" (a contraction, two syntactic words);
• Je mange du pain — the partitive article, "some bread" (one word).

A noun moves between mass and count with a change of sense: du poulet "chicken (meat)", un poulet "a chicken". Some nouns that are mass in English are plural or count in French: des renseignements "information", des cheveux "hair", des meubles "furniture" (beside the mass du mobilier). Le, Bale and Barner (le-2026) used this contrast in a quantity-judgment experiment: English speakers judged object-mass nouns (furniture), French speakers their count translations (meubles), and in both languages the comparison was by number of objects, no more open to contextual effects than with ordinary count nouns. Individuation, they conclude, is fixed in the noun's lexical entry, not by its syntax.

The partitive is not only "some": it is also evaluative (Il a du talent, C'est de la folie) and turns a count noun into a mass reading (Il y a du lapin à midi "rabbit [as food]").

History. Old French used the bare noun where the modern language has the partitive (boire vin, manger viande); the bare noun is still common in the sixteenth century, and the partitive became obligatory in the seventeenth (Brunot 1899, section «L'article partitif», brunot-1899).

The last two rows are the rule of §3.1: under negation only the indefinite and partitive articles change; the definite stays.

2. The noun without article

A noun stands without a determiner in a closed set of contexts.

• After en and in many fixed prepositional phrases: en voiture, sans argent, avec plaisir, par avion, de pierre, à cheval.
• A predicate noun of profession, nationality or status with no modifier: Elle est avocate, Il est devenu médecin. With a modifier, or after c'est, the article returns: C'est une avocate, Elle est une avocate renommée.
• Apposition, address, titles: Paris, capitale de la France; Bonjour, docteur.
• Headlines, signs, proverbs: Entrée libre, Défense de fumer, Pierre qui roule n'amasse pas mousse.
• Verb–noun idioms: avoir faim, avoir peur, prendre froid, faire peur, perdre pied; sans doute.
• Enumerations and pairs: Femmes, moines, vieillards, tout était descendu (La Fontaine, quoted by Brunot 1899, section «Ellipse de l'article»); père et mère, à tort ou à raison.

Brunot states the modern rule as: a French noun needs an article, or an equivalent word such as a possessive or a demonstrative, to be fully a noun; the bare uses are stylistic or fixed.

3. De in place of the article

De (d' before a vowel) replaces the indefinite or partitive article in three environments.

3.1 After a negation

When the negation bears on the quantity, un, une, du, de la, des become de: J'ai des amis → Je n'ai pas d'amis; Il boit du vin → Il ne boit pas de vin; Je n'ai plus de pain; La fille qui répond n'a pas de temps à nous consacrer (GSD fr-ud-dev_00353). Brunot (section «L'article partitif») explains it historically: pas and point were nouns ("a step", "a dot"), so pas de temps was built like peu de temps, a quantity word with de and a bare noun. The article stays:

• after être and the other copulas: Ce n'est pas un livre;
• in a contrast: Je n'ai pas des amis, j'ai des alliés; Il ne boit pas du vin, mais du jus;
• with the definite article: Je n'aime pas le vin;
• with ne … que, which is not a negation of quantity: Il ne boit que du vin.

Which negations trigger it is in 27. Negation.

3.2 After a quantity word

Quantity adverbs and nouns take de and a bare noun: beaucoup de gens, peu de temps, assez de, trop de, plus de, moins de, tant de, combien de, une bouteille de vin, un kilo de pommes, une dizaine de thoniers (fr-ud-train_03512). After bien, la plupart, la majorité, the noun is definite and the form is des (= de + les): la plupart des gens, bien des fois; the verb then agrees with the plural noun (la plupart des gens sont partis).

3.3 Before an adjective that precedes a plural noun

In the written standard, des becomes de before an adjective + noun: de grands arbres, de bons amis, de bons petits plats (fr-ud-train_04010). In speech des grands arbres is usual. When the adjective follows the noun, or adjective and noun form a lexical unit, des stays: des arbres magnifiques, des petits pois, des jeunes gens, des grands-parents.

The rule is recent. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers have des before an adjective (Sévigné: des petits ponts); de appears in the later seventeenth century, and grammarians then extended it to the singular partitive (de bon vin), against popular usage, which keeps du vieux vin (Brunot 1899, same section).

Counts. In GSD the sequence DET (Definite=Ind) + ADJ + NOUN has the determiner de/d' 398 times and des 18 times; in ParisStories 8 against 20, in Rhapsodie 9 against 11. (The de count includes cases after a negation or a quantity word, and the des count lexical units such as petits pois; the contrast between the written and the spoken corpora is still clear.)

3.4 Preposition de after a quantity noun

In une série de grands concerts (fr-ud-train_06911), de is a preposition introducing the complement of série: the same graphic de is an article in §§3.1–3.3 and a preposition here. UD gives it DET with det in one case and ADP with case in the other (§16).

4. Demonstratives

Ce système (fr-ud-dev_00053), cet arbre, cette audace (fr-ud-dev_00070), ces enfants. Cet and cette sound alike (/sɛt/), so the spoken demonstrative does not show the gender of a vowel-initial noun. The demonstrative points into the situation or back into the text ("the one just mentioned"), and has temporal uses (ce matin, cette année). Near and far are marked, when needed, by -ci and -là on the noun: ce livre-ci, ce livre-là. In speech -là is far more frequent and serves for both, often with a distancing tone (ce type-là). GSD has 2 214 demonstrative DET tokens.

5. Possessives

The possessive determiner agrees in gender and number with the possessed noun and in person and number with the possessor. The third person does not mark the possessor's sex: son livre is "his book" or "her book".

Before a feminine noun beginning with a vowel the masculine form is used: mon amie, son énergie; but ma belle amie. With a plural possessor, leur + singular is used when each has one (Les enfants aiment leur mère), leurs when there are several (leurs parents); usage varies where each has one of a kind (Ils ont levé leur(s) verre(s)).

GSD has 4 348 possessive DET; the third person is 90% of them (son 1 543, sa 925, ses 793, leur 455, leurs 211; mon only 73).

Short and long forms. French also had long possessives (mien, tien, sien), used before the noun in Old French, often with an article (le tuen cors "your body"). Simonenko and Carlier (simonenko-2022) counted prenominal possessives in historical treebanks of French, Spanish and Portuguese: with the long forms the share of an accompanying determiner rises steadily, with the short forms it rises and then falls, in all three languages; the languages differ only in which paradigm each kept before the noun. Modern French keeps the long forms as pronouns (le mien, §14) and, before a noun, only archaically or ironically (un mien cousin).

Other uses. With a body part whose owner is clear the definite article replaces the possessive (Elle a levé la main, Il s'est cassé la jambe; Je lui ai pris la main), unless the part is qualified (sa main gauche). For an inanimate possessor the written language often uses en + article when the possessed noun is subject or predicate: La réalité en est malheureusement toute différente (fr-ud-train_02702). After on, chacun, tout le monde the possessive is son (On aime sa famille); with on = "we", notre. A possessive excludes any other determiner (*le mon livre); French says un de mes amis, un ami à moi.

6. Quantifiers and indefinite determiners

Tout + definite article + singular is "the whole" (dans tout le camping, fr-ud-dev_00311); tous les + plural is "all the, every" (dans tous les sens, fr-ud-dev_00883). Tous is /tu/ as a determiner and /tus/ as a pronoun (Ils sont tous là). As an adverb ("quite, entirely") tout is invariable, except that it agrees before a feminine adjective beginning with a consonant or an aspirated h: tout petit, tout petits, tout heureuse, but toute petite, toutes petites, toute honteuse.

GSD indefinite and negative DET by form: plusieurs 252, quelques 150, chaque 133, certains 80, aucune 54, aucun 53, certaines 52, toute 50, tout 48 (PronType=Ind 925, Neg 111 in all). Tous/toutes before an article are mostly ADJ in GSD (tous ADJ 192, DET 14), an annotation choice to know when counting. For certain, différent, divers before and after the noun, see 15. Adjectives and adverbs.

7. Numerals

7.1 Cardinals

0–16 are simple: zéro, un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix, onze, douze, treize, quatorze, quinze, seize. 17–19 are dix-sept, dix-huit, dix-neuf. The tens to 60 are vingt, trente, quarante, cinquante, soixante, with et before un and onze only: vingt et un, soixante et onze, but vingt-deux, quatre-vingt-un, quatre-vingt-onze, cent un.

70–99 in France count partly by twenties: soixante-dix (60 + 10), soixante et onze, quatre-vingts (4 × 20), quatre-vingt-dix (4 × 20 + 10). Belgium and Switzerland say septante and nonante, and the Swiss cantons of Vaud, Valais and Fribourg huitante for 80 (08. National and regional varieties of French). The decimal forms are the inherited ones (septante < Latin septuaginta); soixante-dix is already in Ogier le Danois, and after the fifteenth century septante is rare in literary French (Nyrop II, §483, nyrop-1899). Old French counted further by twenties (six vingts = 120; the Paris Quinze-Vingts, 300), and Brunot (brunot-1899) records septante, nonante as provincial and popular in his day.

100 and up: cent, deux cents, mille, deux mille, un million, un milliard (10⁹), un billion (10¹²). Un is not said before cent and mille but is before million and milliard. In dates mil is an optional old spelling (l'an mil neuf cent); years are read mille neuf cent quatre-vingt-dix or dix-neuf cent quatre-vingt-dix.

Spelling. Traditionally the parts of a number below 100 are hyphenated except around et (vingt-deux, vingt et un), and the parts above 100 are separated by spaces (deux cent trois). The 1990 rectifications hyphenate every complex numeral, below and above a hundred: vingt-et-un, cent-deux, deux-cent-soixante-et-onze (cslf-1990, rule 1; 06. Spelling rules: inflection, compounds, hyphens and the 1990 rectifications). Million and milliard are nouns and stay separate words. In figures, groups of three digits are separated by a (non-breaking) space and the decimal sign is a comma: 25 785, 3,14 (07. Punctuation, typography, capitals, abbreviations and numbers).

7.2 Agreement and position

Un has a feminine une; the other cardinals are invariable, except that vingt and cent take -s when multiplied and not followed by another numeral: quatre-vingts ans but quatre-vingt-trois ans, deux cents euros but deux cent trois euros. Brunot notes that the -s of these multiples was the general rule in the old language. Used as ordinals they stay invariable: page quatre-vingt, l'an deux cent. Mille is invariable. Million and milliard are nouns: they take -s and de (deux millions d'habitants), but no de when another number follows (deux millions cent mille habitants).

The cardinal stands after the determiner and before premier, dernier, autres: les deux premiers jours "the first two days", les trois derniers "the last three", les deux autres "the other two" — the reverse of the English order. A numeral can head a phrase without a noun: Ils sont trois, J'en ai vu deux (with en, §11).

In a superlative partitive the article and adjective may be feminine over a default masculine plural noun when the referent is a woman (la plus intelligente de mes gentils professeurs); Sleeman and Ihsane (sleeman-2016) show that quantified partitives (trois des livres) do not behave the same way.

7.3 Ordinals, collectives, fractions

The ordinal adds -ième to the cardinal: deuxième, troisième, vingt et unième, centième, dropping a final -e (quatrième, onzième) and with cinq → cinquième, neuf → neuvième. Premier/première replaces unième except in compounds; second(e) competes with deuxième. Dates use the cardinal except for the first day (le premier mai, le deux mai). Abbreviations: 1er, 1re, 2e (informally 2ème): Le 24e RIC (fr-ud-dev_00054). Roman numerals name centuries and monarchs: le XIXe siècle, Louis XIV.

Une dizaine, une douzaine, une vingtaine, une centaine are feminine nouns ("about ten", …), un millier masculine; they take de and a bare noun (une dizaine de thoniers). Fractions: un demi, un tiers, un quart, trois quarts, la moitié, un cinquième. Demi is invariable before the noun with a hyphen (une demi-heure) and agrees in gender after it (une heure et demie). Multiplicatives: double, triple; deux fois.

The final consonants of six, dix, huit drop before a consonant and become /z/ or stay before a vowel (six livres /si/, six ans /siz/); neuf is /nœv/ in neuf ans, neuf heures (04. Connected speech: enchaînement, liaison, elision, the mute e and assimilation).

8. Personal pronouns

The clitic (weak, conjoined) pronouns are bound to the verb: they cannot be stressed, coordinated or separated from the verb except by other clitics and ne. The strong (disjoint, tonic) pronouns are free.

Add on (§13), y and en (§11), the subject ce (§8.3) and soi (§12). Vous is also the polite singular; the choice of tu or vous holds for a whole relationship (32. Politeness and hedging). Gender is marked only in the third person, and not in les, leur, se; lui is both the dative clitic of either gender and the masculine strong form, and elle(s) is both clitic and strong.

8.1 Subject clitics

A finite verb must have an expressed subject: French is not a null-subject language like Spanish or Italian. The exceptions are the imperative and a few fixed phrases (Peu importe, N'importe, Soit). The subject clitic stands before the verb and its clitic cluster (Je ne le lui ai pas dit); in inversion it follows the verb with a hyphen (Est-il parti ?, Va-t-il se circonscrire à cette seule matière ?, fr-ud-dev_00602, with the -t- inserted after a vowel; 26. Questions). A dislocated noun can be doubled by the clitic (Marie, elle est partie; 29. Ellipsis, word order and information structure).

Speech reduces the subject clitics: j'sais pas /ʃepa/, t'as vu, i(l) dit, y a pas; some analyses treat them as agreement prefixes of the verb. Subject pronouns (nsubj, PRON) by form:

In the Paris narratives the subject "we" is on: nous occurs 4 times against 741 on. Rhapsodie, which mixes genres including more formal speech, keeps nous and vous.

8.2 Impersonal il

A non-referring il is the subject of weather verbs (Il pleut), of impersonal constructions (Il faut partir, Il y a un problème, Il est important que …, Il s'agit de …) and of impersonal passives (Il a été décidé que …). The logical subject can follow the verb, which agrees with il: Il arrive des accidents. In Il y a douze espèces reconnues (fr-ud-train_00231) both il and y are expletive. GSD marks the expletive subject expl:subj: il 611, c' 187, -il 34, ce 33, -t-il 16, -ce 13 (931 tokens in all).

8.3 Ce

Ce (c') is the subject of être in C'est un livre, Ce sont des amis. C'est introduces a determined noun phrase, a strong pronoun, a clause, or a situation (C'est grand, of a place in view); il/elle est takes a bare adjective or a bare noun of profession about a definite referent (Elle est avocate, Il est grand). Clefts are built on c'est … qui/que (29. Ellipsis, word order and information structure). With a plural predicate the written verb is plural (Ce sont eux), the spoken one singular (C'est eux).

9. Object clitics and their order

Direct-object clitics: me, te, le, la, nous, vous, les; indirect-object clitics: me, te, lui, nous, vous, leur. Lui and leur stand for a person (Je lui parle); for a thing, y (§11). Je leur rétorque qu'ils l'avaient bien vu quand je le leur ai laissé (fr-ud-train_12887) has both kinds.

Le is also invariable ("neuter") for a predicate (Heureuse, elle ne l'a pas toujours été) and for a clause (Je le sais; Il me l'a dit à la Haye, fr-ud-test_00087).

With some verbs whose complement is à + person, the dative clitic is not used and a strong pronoun follows à: Je pense à elle, Il tient à moi, Fais attention à lui, Je m'adresse à lui; for a thing, y (J'y pense). The class includes penser à, songer à, rêver à, tenir à, renoncer à, faire attention à, être à, and the pronominal verbs (s'adresser à, s'habituer à, se fier à).

9.1 The order

Il me le donne, Il le lui donne, Elle nous en parle, Je m'y suis habitué, Il y en a, Il n'y en a point (fr-ud-test_00097). The order is not by case alone: a first- or second-person pronoun precedes the third-person direct object (me le), while the third-person direct object precedes the third-person dative (le lui).

Not every combination is possible:

• a first- or second-person direct object cannot combine with a dative clitic (the person–case constraint): *Il me lui présente; the dative becomes a strong pronoun, Il me présente à lui;
• two first-or-second-person clitics do not combine: *Il me te donne;
• lui y is avoided, and y, en close the cluster (lui en, m'en, y en).

With at most one clitic per slot, a fixed order and gaps, the cluster behaves more like verb morphology than free syntax, and many analyses treat it so.

Counts. Adjacent pairs of object-type clitics (PRON in obj, iobj, expl:*, obl*, nmod) are rare: 98 in GSD, 62 of them s'en and s'y of pronominal verbs; 28 in ParisStories (y en 9, m'en 6), 19 in Rhapsodie. Over seven treebanks (GSD, ParisStories, Rhapsodie, Sequoia, PUD, FQB, ALTS) there are 289: s'en 141, s'y 42, y en 30, l'en 13, and le lui, le leur once each. The excluded combinations do not occur, but the corpora are too small for their absence to mean much.

With negation and compound tenses. Ne precedes the whole cluster and pas follows the finite verb (Je ne le lui ai pas dit). The cluster precedes the auxiliary (Je le leur ai laissé), and a preceding direct-object clitic can make the participle agree (13. Verbs).

10. Clitics with infinitives, causatives and the imperative

Infinitives. A clitic stands before the verb of which it is an argument: Je veux le voir, Il ne peut pas lui parler, Pouvez-vous nous en dire plus ? (fr-ud-train_02355, where nous and en belong to dire). The older order with the clitic before the modal (Je le veux voir) is "clitic climbing". Olivier, Sevdali and Folli (olivier-2023), on a corpus of legal texts, find it obligatory until Middle French and lost before the start of the nineteenth century; they link its loss to the loss of interpolation (material between clitic and verb, clitic–XP–V), and argue that French kept restructuring but lost most of its visible effects, retaining the long passive and quantifier climbing.

Causatives and perception verbs. With faire, laisser and verbs of perception the clitics go before the finite verb: Je le lui fais lire, Je l'ai vu partir, Son entourage, ses enfants le lui font remarquer (fr-ud-train_04603). The causee of a transitive infinitive is dative (lui). See 23. Complementation.

Affirmative imperative. The clitics follow the verb, joined by hyphens, in the order direct object – indirect object – y – en, with moi, toi for me, te: Donne-le-moi, Dis-le-leur, Donnez-m'en (m', t' before en), Suis-moi (fr-ud-dev_00823), Va-t'en, Assieds-toi. The tu-form of -er verbs and va add -s before y and en: Vas-y, Manges-en. In the negative imperative the ordinary preverbal order returns: Ne me le donne pas, N'en parlez pas, Ne t'en va pas. Colloquial Donne-moi-le is non-standard.

11. Y and en

Y and en replace prepositional complements; they have no person or gender.

• Y replaces à + a thing (Je pense à ce problème → J'y pense) and a place (Il va à Paris → Il y va; On y mange correctement, fr-ud-dev_00087). It is avoided for persons in the standard (§9).
• En replaces de + a thing (Il en parle), an origin (J'en viens), the inanimate possessor (§5), the partitive (Tu veux du pain ? — J'en veux) and the noun of a quantity that is left unsaid: J'ai trois frères → J'en ai trois; Tsahal a commandé 130 Namers et en a reçu 10 (fr-ud-train_06235).
• Fixed y and en: il y a, s'en aller, en vouloir à, s'y prendre, y compris, Je n'en peux plus, Voilà où nous en sommes (fr-ud-train_13769).

Both continue Latin adverbs (ibi, inde; Brunot 1899, §416 «Origine des adverbes»), hence the older name "pronominal adverbs". PRON per 1 000 words: y 1.3 in GSD (530), 6.1 in ParisStories (262), 5.8 in Rhapsodie (258); en 0.7 (282), 1.1 (45), 1.1 (50). Speech has four to five times more y, mostly in il y a, y a.

12. Strong pronouns

The strong pronouns moi, toi, lui, elle, nous, vous, eux, elles and soi are used:

• alone or after a conjunction: Qui est là ? — Moi.; plus grand que toi; ni lui ni elle;
• in coordination: Marie et moi, nous sommes parties;
• after a preposition: chez elle (fr-ud-train_02204), avec eux;
• after c'est: C'est lui qui recruta le successeur de Graham (fr-ud-dev_00665);
• as a dislocated double of a clitic: Moi, je pense que …; spoken nous on s'est dit (ParisStories_2021_adoptionMouts_14);
• with -même: l'autorité judiciaire elle-même (fr-ud-dev_00594), lui-même;
• as the subject of a verbless or participial phrase: Lui parti, la maison était vide.

Soi goes with an indefinite subject (Chacun pour soi), lui, elle, eux with a definite one.

Strong pronouns for things. After a preposition the strong pronouns usually refer to persons; for things French uses y, en, or a preposition without complement (Il a voté pour, Il lui a sauté dessus). Da Cunha and Heidinger (cunha-2026) tested this in acceptability experiments on French and Spanish. When a null complement is possible after the preposition, the strong pronoun is preferred for humans; after prepositions that allow no null complement, such as par and vers, it can refer to things as well (Ce pays, j'ai toujours été attiré par lui). Their analysis explains the restriction by competition with the null form and by the match between grammatical and natural gender, without an animacy feature on the pronoun. The rule "strong pronoun for persons" is a tendency.

13. Reflexive, reciprocal and on

13.1 Reflexive and reciprocal

The third-person reflexive is se (s'), for singular, plural and on; the first and second persons use me, te, nous, vous. A pronominal verb has it as a fixed part (se souvenir, s'évanouir), as a true reflexive (Elle se lave), as a reciprocal (Ils se parlent, made explicit by l'un l'autre, entre eux), or as a middle or passive (Ces livres se vendent bien; 28. Voice and the passive). All take être in compound tenses (13. Verbs). GSD distinguishes the uses by relation, not by form: obj for the true reflexive (qu'ils se sont consultés, fr-ud-train_06603), expl:pv for the inherent reflexive (1 017 tokens), expl:pass for the reflexive passive and middle (686).

13.2 On

On is a subject clitic with a third-person singular verb. It means "people in general" (On dit que …), "someone" (On a frappé), and in speech "we", where it has largely replaced nous as subject (§8.1; 37. Register and variation). With on = "we" a predicate adjective or participle may agree with the real referents: on est arrivé de nuit (ParisStories_2020_campBedouin_6) has the singular, on est restées bloquées en bas (ParisStories_2022_13_CocktailsEtCrêpes__19) the feminine plural. In the formal register l'on appears after que, si, où, et. Its reflexive is se, its possessive son or, for "we", notre.

Counts. On as nsubj: GSD 526, ParisStories 741, Rhapsodie 281. The head of that on is plural in 2 of 526 cases in GSD, 20 of 741 in ParisStories, 8 of 281 in Rhapsodie. With a copular predicate the share is higher: plural in 14 of 74 ParisStories cases and 5 of 15 in Rhapsodie, none of 10 in GSD. Plural agreement with on exists in speech, as a minority.

14. Demonstrative, indefinite and possessive pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns.

Celui, celle, ceux, celles need a complement (celui de Pierre, celle qui est partie) or -ci/-là: Celles-ci peuvent à tout moment jeter l'éponge (fr-ud-train_01390). In two-term contrasts -ci is "the latter" and -là "the former". Cela (spoken ça) refers to a situation or a clause (Ça va ?); ceci announces what follows, or refers back (Ceci permet le recrutement du ribosome, fr-ud-train_02258). Ce stands before a relative and before être: ce qui ne gâte rien (fr-ud-dev_00270), C'est ce que nous nommons aujourd'hui le Vieux-Flassans (fr-ud-dev_00188). In speech ça replaces cela.

Indefinite pronouns: quelqu'un, personne, rien, quelque chose, chacun(e), tout, tous, plusieurs, certains, aucun(e), l'un … l'autre, autre chose, n'importe qui/quoi, quiconque, autrui. Personne and rien are negative with ne (personne ne sait, fr-ud-train_03972; je ne vais rien oublier, fr-ud-test_00293) and alone in answers (Personne.), and positive in some contexts without ne (sans rien dire; 27. Negation). An adjective after an indefinite pronoun takes de and the masculine: quelqu'un de gentil, rien de plus (fr-ud-dev_00961), rien d'exceptionnel (fr-ud-train_00599). Tout is the neuter "everything" (Tout va bien).

Possessive pronouns are the article + the long possessive: le mien, la mienne, les miens, les miennes; le tien; le sien; le nôtre, la nôtre, les nôtres; le vôtre; le leur, la leur, les leurs. The circumflex and the open vowel of nôtre, vôtre distinguish them from notre, votre. The article fuses with à, de (au mien, des leurs). Idioms: les nôtres "our people", y mettre du sien. The predicative possessive is à moi (Ce livre est à moi).

15. Relative and interrogative pronouns: the forms

The relative and interrogative pronouns largely share their forms. The clauses are in 25. Relative clauses and 26. Questions.

Relative.

Dont replaces a de-phrase: la tribu Al Bu Said, dont est issu l'actuel sultan (fr-ud-dev_00024). Lequel, laquelle, lesquels, lesquelles fuse with à and de (§1): date à laquelle Mesa quitte les Postobón (fr-ud-train_01832), match au cours duquel il inscrit un but (fr-ud-train_02217), l'environnement social dans lequel elle évolue (fr-ud-train_02591). Quoi follows a preposition after ce, rien or a clause (ce à quoi je pense, après quoi). Que elides, qui does not.

Interrogative.

Quel is the interrogative and exclamative determiner (Quel livre ?, Quelle belle journée !) and the predicate of être (Quel est le coût d'un tel projet ?, fr-ud-test_00178). Où, quand, comment, pourquoi, combien are adverbs. Colloquial French prefers quoi in situ (Tu fais quoi ?).

16. The annotation in UD French

16.1 Conventions (GSD)

• Articles are DET with PronType=Art, Definite=Def|Ind, relation det. The partitive du (Il faudra encore du temps, fr-ud-train_00391) is one DET word, lemma du (101 tokens); only the contraction du = de + le is a multiword token. The de of §§3.1–3.3 (pas de temps, fr-ud-dev_00353) is DET with lemma un.
• De after a quantity noun is ADP case, the quantity noun is the head and the second noun its nmod (une série de grands concerts). A quantity adverb heads its phrase: in peu de temps après (fr-ud-dev_00069) peu is ADV with ExtPos=PRON and temps its obl:arg.
• Possessives are DET with Poss=Yes, PronType=Prs, the noun's gender and number, and Person[psor], Number[psor] for the possessor.
• Numerals are NUM, nummod; 25 785 is one token (179 such). Of 10 479 NUM, 8 626 contain a digit; the commonest words are deux 636, trois 243, quatre 126. NumType=Ord (216) marks only abbreviated ordinals (xixe 37, xxe 25, 137e); premier, première, deuxième, troisième (ADJ, 518) have no NumType.
• Pronouns are PRON with PronType Prs 11 354, Rel 3 103, Dem 1 633, Ind 1 416, Neg 114, Int 67. Clitics have Emph=No and Case (il Nom, le Acc, lui Dat); strong forms Emph=Yes (lui 139, eux 71, lui-même 56, elle 47, moi 42).
• Clitics depend on the verb whose argument they are: in fr-ud-train_02355 nous (iobj) and en (obj) depend on dire, the xcomp of Pouvez. In the causative fr-ud-train_04603 font is AUX aux:caus, remarquer is the root, le its obj, lui its iobj:agent, and the noun subject nsubj:caus.
• Y (530) is obl:mod 222, expl:comp 154 (il y a), iobj 114, fixed 19 (y compris); en (282) is iobj 112, nmod 86 (possessor, or the set a number is taken from), expl:comp 53, obj 15. Expletives in all: expl:pv 1 017, expl:subj 931, expl:pass 686, expl:comp 211.
• Relatives have PronType=Rel; the clause is acl:relcl (dont in fr-ud-dev_00024 is iobj of the adjective issu).

16.2 Size of the classes

Speech has three times the pronoun share of GSD (14.9% in ParisStories against 4.4%) and half its determiner share (8.1% against 15.3%). Of GSD's DET, 53 469 are articles (le 15 425, la 10 956, les 9 738, l' 7 169, un 4 153, une 3 543, des 1 782, de 427, d' 159, du 101), then possessives 4 348, demonstratives 2 214, indefinites 925, negatives 111, interrogatives 24, exclamatives 7.

16.3 The pronoun lemmas

GSD lemmatises the personal pronouns to the strong form: lemma lui covers il (3 612 with capitals), elle, ils, elles, le, la, l', les, lui, leur, eux (6 631 PRON tokens); moi covers je, j', me, m', moi; soi covers se, s' (2 325). A count by lemma therefore merges subject, object and strong pronouns and hides third-person gender and number; this chapter counts by form and relation. The article le (DET) keeps the lemma le.

17. How Mova handles determiners, pronouns and numerals

What is done. Mova has no French lexicon of determiners, pronouns or numerals and no French morphology. The English parser en is measured on French after en xpos-fill (xpos_fill, xpos_of in en/src/main.rs) fills the empty XPOS column with Penn Treebank tags computed from UPOS and FEATS alone:

en parse-eval then trains and tests on the treebank: LAS 87.00 with its own tags and 89.78 with gold tags on GSD (UD 2.18, train → dev, 2026-10-22; PACKAGE.md). The CoNLL-U reader (en/src/conllu.rs) skips multiword-token lines and works on syntactic words, so the parser sees de + le, never du; the split comes from the treebank. The parser learns French clitic attachment only from the training trees; it is told no rule.

What the tags lose. Person, gender, case, the clitic–strong contrast (le, lui and eux are all PRP), the possessor features, the article–partitive contrast, and the negative–indefinite contrast (personne and quelqu'un are both PRP).

What is not done.

• The article rules of §§1–3: nothing flags *Il n'a pas des amis or *J'ai vu chiens.
• The clitic order and the person–case constraint: *Il me lui présente is not rejected, and nothing generates a cluster.
• Tu/vous, on as "we", the choice of lui or à elle.
• Numeral values: quatre-vingt-dix-sept is a CD token with no value, and the -s of vingt, cent is not checked.
• French tokenization: the tokenizer (en/src/tok.rs) has English clitic rules ('s, n't, cannot) and none for French elision or for du, au, aux, des; on raw French text the parser would not get the treebank's words. Its French accuracy has not been measured.
• The merged pronoun lemmas of §16.3 are not corrected.
• The relations of this chapter (det, nummod, expl:*, iobj, clitic obj) have not been scored separately; the LAS is an average, and this chapter's counts describe the treebanks, not the parser.

Sources for this chapter

• Brunot, F. 1899, Précis de grammaire historique de la langue française (brunot-1899, public domain): the sections on the numerals (septante, quatre-vingts, the -s of vingt and cent), «L'article partitif» (the partitive, de before an adjective, pas de), «Ellipse de l'article», and §416 «Origine des adverbes» (y, en).
• Nyrop, K. Grammaire historique de la langue française, tome II (nyrop-1899, public domain): §483, the tens (septante, octante, soixante-dix).
• Conseil supérieur de la langue française 1990, Les rectifications de l'orthographe (cslf-1990, official text): rule 1, hyphens in numerals.
• Le, K. N., Bale, A. & Barner, D. 2026, Object-mass nouns specify individuation lexically: evidence from English and French, Glossa 11(1) (le-2026, CC BY 4.0).
• Simonenko, A. & Carlier, A. 2022, The evolution of possessive phrases and the rise of DP in French, Spanish, and Portuguese, Glossa 7(1) (simonenko-2022, CC BY 4.0).
• Sleeman, P. & Ihsane, T. 2016, Gender mismatches in partitive constructions with superlatives in French, Glossa 1(1) (sleeman-2016, CC BY 4.0).
• Olivier, M., Sevdali, C. & Folli, R. 2023, Clitic climbing and restructuring in the history of French, Glossa 8(1) (olivier-2023, CC BY 4.0).
• da Cunha, Y. & Heidinger, S. 2026, Animacy restrictions without animacy features: the case of strong pronouns in French and Spanish, Glossa 11(1) (cunha-2026, CC BY 4.0).
• Universal Dependencies 2.18: French GSD, ParisStories, Rhapsodie (CC BY-SA 4.0; short quotations with sent_id), Sequoia, FQB (LGPL-LR), PUD, ALTS (CC BY-SA; counts only), ud-treebanks-v2.18; counts of 2026-11-06. ParTUT is not used.
• Mova: en/src/main.rs (xpos_fill, xpos_of), en/src/conllu.rs, en/src/tok.rs; baselines in What every language gets.

This page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/fr/12-determiners-pronouns-numerals/