Elamur: **Mova** · [Parse](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/parse/) · [Dictionary](https://md.dictionary.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [Translate](https://md.translate.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [Groupants](https://md.groupants.elamur.ai/free/en/)

[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/fr/22-phrases/)

[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [docs](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/) / [languages](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/) / [fr](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/fr/) / 22. Phrases

# 22. Phrases

**On this page**

1. [1. Phrases in a French tree](#1-phrases-in-a-french-tree)
2. [2. The noun phrase: order and determiner](#2-the-noun-phrase-order-and-determiner)
3. [3. Adjectives in the noun phrase](#3-adjectives-in-the-noun-phrase)
4. [4. Complements of the noun](#4-complements-of-the-noun)
5. [5. Clauses and participles on the noun](#5-clauses-and-participles-on-the-noun)
6. [6. Quantity: numerals, quantifiers, partitives](#6-quantity-numerals-quantifiers-partitives)
7. [7. Phrases without a noun head](#7-phrases-without-a-noun-head)
8. [8. The adjective phrase](#8-the-adjective-phrase)
9. [9. Comparison and the superlative](#9-comparison-and-the-superlative)
10. [10. The adverb phrase](#10-the-adverb-phrase)
11. [11. The prepositional phrase](#11-the-prepositional-phrase)
12. [12. Where attachment goes wrong](#12-where-attachment-goes-wrong)
13. [13. How Mova handles it](#13-how-mova-handles-it)
14. [14. Sources](#14-sources)

A French phrase is built round one head word, and the order of the words round it is fixed more tightly than in English. The noun phrase opens with a determiner that is almost never missing, puts most of its adjectives after the noun, and attaches every complement of the noun with a preposition: there are no noun stacks of the English kind (*the town hall car park*). The adjective phrase puts its degree word before the adjective and its complement after it. The prepositional phrase is a preposition and a noun phrase, an infinitive or, with *en*, a gerund; a preposition is never left behind at the end of a clause. This chapter describes the noun phrase (determiners, adjectives and their position, complements, modifier clauses, quantity), the phrases headed by pronouns, the adjective phrase and comparison, the adverb phrase and the prepositional phrase, with the UD analysis of each and counts from the treebanks. The forms of the articles, possessives and numerals are in the determiners chapter; the forms and agreement of adjectives in the adjectives chapter; the relative clause in chapter 25.

Contents:

1. Phrases in a French tree
2. The noun phrase: order and determiner
3. Adjectives in the noun phrase
4. Complements of the noun
5. Clauses and participles on the noun
6. Quantity: numerals, quantifiers, partitives
7. Phrases without a noun head
8. The adjective phrase
9. Comparison and the superlative
10. The adverb phrase
11. The prepositional phrase
12. Where attachment goes wrong
13. How Mova handles it
14. Sources

---

## 1. Phrases in a French tree

UD has no phrase nodes. A phrase is a head word and everything that depends on it, and the head is the content word: the noun in a noun phrase, the noun (not the preposition) in a prepositional phrase, the adjective in an adjective phrase. Chapter 20 gives the general decisions; for phrases they mean:

| phrase | head | dependents | example and relations |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| noun phrase | the noun | `det`, `amod`, `nummod`, `nmod`, `acl`, `acl:relcl`, `appos` | *le petit chat noir de ma voisine*: *chat* ← `det` *le*, `amod` *petit*, `amod` *noir*, `nmod` *voisine* |
| prepositional phrase | the noun | `case` on the noun, then the noun's own dependents | *dans la maison*: *maison* ← `case` *dans*, `det` *la* |
| adjective phrase | the adjective | `advmod`, `obl:arg`/`obl:mod`, `ccomp` | *très fier de son fils*: *fier* ← `advmod` *très*, `obl:arg` *fils* |
| adverb phrase | the adverb | `advmod`, the comparison standard | *beaucoup plus vite* |
| infinitive after a preposition | the infinitive | `mark` on the infinitive | *pour partir*: *partir* ← `mark` *pour* |

A prepositional phrase therefore has three layers when the preposition is contracted with an article: *aux tueurs* is the syntactic words *à les tueurs*, with *à* `case` and *les* `det` of *tueurs* (chapter 20, §3). In the written GSD the noun phrase is most of the text: `det`, `case`, `nmod` and `amod` are 44% of all relations, against 22% in the spoken ParisStories (counted 2026-11-06).

## 2. The noun phrase: order and determiner

The order inside a noun phrase is:

**(pre-determiner *tout*) – determiner – (numeral) – (short adjective) – noun – (adjectives) – (prepositional complements) – (participle or relative clause)**

> le petit chat noir de ma voisine qui dort au soleil *the little cat black of my neighbour who sleeps in-the sun* — "my neighbour's little black cat that is sleeping in the sun"

> tous les trois grands romans de Balzac *all the three great novels of Balzac* — "all three of Balzac's great novels"

**The determiner is obligatory** with a common noun in an argument position, singular or plural, count or mass. Where English has a bare noun, French has an article: *Le vin est cher* ("Wine is expensive", generic), *Il boit du vin* ("He drinks wine", partitive), *Il a des amis* ("He has friends"). In UD French GSD 60 661 determiners stand before 75 330 common nouns; the four commonest determiner lemmas are *le* (42 903, the definite article in all its forms), *un* (9 976), the possessive *son* (4 346) and the demonstrative *ce* (2 207) (UD 2.18, 2026-11-06).

**Bare nouns** are limited to a known list of frames (fraser-1921, §330):

- a predicate noun of profession, nationality or status after *être, devenir, rester, élire, nommer*: *Il est médecin, Elle a été élue maire* (chapter 21, §8);
- after *de* of quantity and the *de* that replaces an indefinite or partitive article under negation (*beaucoup de livres, pas de pain*; chapter 27, §8);
- after *en* and in many prepositional idioms: *en bois, en voiture, avec soin, sans argent, par cœur, à pied*;
- in noun complements that name a kind: *une tasse à café, un professeur de musique, une table en bois*;
- in apposition and in titles, lists, headlines, addresses: *Tarzan, l'homme singe* has an article, but *Victor Hugo, poète et romancier* does not;
- in verb idioms: *avoir faim, avoir peur, prendre part, faire attention, rendre service*. GSD marks the commonest as light-verb objects (`obj:lvc`, 554 times: *avoir lieu, faire partie, mettre fin*);
- in coordinated pairs and proverbs: *corps et âme, Pauvreté n'est pas vice*.

**Determiners do not stack**, except the pre-determiner *tout* (*tout le monde, tous les jours, toutes ces raisons*) and the numeral after a definite, possessive or demonstrative (*les trois mousquetaires, mes deux sœurs, ces quelques mots*). GSD analyses this *tout* as an `amod` of the noun (368 times before a noun, never after one), not as a determiner. A possessive and an article never combine (**le mon livre*); "a friend of mine" is *un de mes amis* or *un ami à moi*.

**Agreement.** The determiner and the adjectives agree with the noun in gender and number. In speech the noun's plural is often audible only on the determiner: /lə ʃa/ *le chat*, /le ʃa/ *les chats*.

## 3. Adjectives in the noun phrase

The rule taught to English speakers — "French adjectives follow the noun" — is a tendency, not a law. The UD counts show how strong it is and how much it depends on the register (adjectives `amod` of a common noun, UD 2.18, 2026-11-06):

| treebank | before the noun | after the noun | share before |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| GSD (written, mixed) | 5 860 | 13 567 | 30.2% |
| Sequoia (written: Europarl, press, medical, Wikipedia) | 895 | 2 811 | 24.2% |
| Rhapsodie (spoken) | 458 | 481 | 48.8% |
| ParisStories (spoken) | 403 | 182 | 68.9% |

Written prose, with its many classifying adjectives (*la politique étrangère, le droit international, une réaction chimique*), puts seven in ten after the noun; the spoken narratives, which use few classifying adjectives and many evaluative ones (*un petit truc, une grosse voiture, un super moment*), put two in three before it.

**The adjectives that precede.** A short list of frequent, mostly short adjectives precede by default: *beau, bon, grand, gros, haut, jeune, joli, long, mauvais, meilleur, moindre, nouveau, petit, vieux, vilain*, the ordinals (*premier, deuxième, dernier* in a series) and *autre, même, seul* (fraser-1921, §351). In GSD the commonest prenominal adjectives are, with the number after the noun in brackets: *premier* 696 (9), *grand* 418 (1), *autre* 366 (3), *tout* 368 (0), *nouveau* 289 (25), *même* 255 (0), *petit* 198 (2), *nombreux* 187 (4), *ancien* 177 (17), *seul* 166 (6), *bon* 157 (4), *dernier* 153 (40), *meilleur* 116 (5), *second* 110 (0), *deuxième* 88 (0), *jeune* 90 (8).

**The adjectives that follow.** Adjectives of colour and shape, of nationality, religion and political affiliation, relational adjectives derived from nouns (*le président américain, l'industrie automobile, une crise cardiaque*), past and present participles used as adjectives (*une porte ouverte, une étoile filante*), and any adjective that has a complement or a heavy modifier (*une contrée riche en vins, un discours extrêmement long*) follow the noun (fraser-1921, §352). A relational adjective cannot precede at all (**l'automobile industrie*).

**Position changes the meaning** of a set of common adjectives. Before the noun the reading is figurative, evaluative or one that classifies the referent within a set; after it, literal and descriptive:

| adjective | before the noun | after the noun |
| --- | --- | --- |
| *ancien* | *un ancien président* "a former president" (fr-ud-train_08351: *L'ancien président Habib Bourguiba*) | *un meuble ancien* "an antique piece of furniture" |
| *cher* | *mon cher ami* "my dear friend" | *une robe chère* "an expensive dress" |
| *grand* | *un grand homme* "a great man" | *un homme grand* "a tall man" |
| *propre* | *son propre adversaire* "his own adversary" (fr-ud-dev_00655) | *un endroit propre* "a clean place" (fr-ud-test_00288) |
| *seul* | *le seul témoin* "the only witness" | *un homme seul* "a man on his own" |
| *pauvre* | *le pauvre homme* "the poor (pitiable) man" | *un homme pauvre* "a poor (penniless) man" |
| *certain* | *un certain succès* "some success" | *un succès certain* "an undoubted success" |
| *dernier* | *la dernière semaine* "the last week (of a series)" | *la semaine dernière* "last week" |
| *même* | *le même jour* "the same day" | *le jour même* "that very day" |
| *nouveau* | *un nouveau livre* "another, a new (recent) book" | *un livre nouveau* "a newly written book" |

Beyond these lists the choice is graded. A study of adjective placement with French transformer models describes it as the effect of many interacting factors — the adjective's frequency and length, its meaning, the noun, lexicalized pairs (*arts premiers* "non-Western art" against *premiers arts* "first arts"), and the other dependents, since an adverb on the adjective pushes it towards postposition — and reports that fine-tuned models choose the attested position well, mostly from the frequency of each adjective, while hard cases with competing factors remain errors for both the models and the native speakers they were compared with (metheniti-2023).

**Several adjectives.** Each keeps its own place: *une jolie petite maison blanche*. Two that follow the noun have the more specific one last, the reverse of English: *des écrivains français célèbres* "famous French writers". Coordinated adjectives go together after the noun: *un objet blanc et étincelant*.

**The adjective in UD.** Every attributive adjective is `amod` of its noun, wherever it stands. The position itself is the only trace of the meaning difference, so a tool that reads *ancien* must look at the word order, not at the relation.

## 4. Complements of the noun

**The noun complement is a prepositional phrase.** The English possessive and the English noun-noun compound are both expressed with a preposition:

| English | French | UD |
| --- | --- | --- |
| *Paul's book* | *le livre de Paul* | `nmod` *Paul* ← `case` *de* |
| *a coffee cup* | *une tasse à café* (the purpose) | `nmod` *café* ← `case` *à* |
| *a cup of coffee* | *une tasse de café* (the content) | `nmod` *café* ← `case` *de* |
| *a wooden table* | *une table en bois* (the material) | `nmod` *bois* ← `case` *en* |
| *a windmill* | *un moulin à vent* | `nmod` |
| *the town hall car park* | *le parking de la mairie* | `nmod` |

In GSD 35 582 words are `nmod`. Their prepositions (the `case` dependent, 2026-11-06) are *de* 23 543 (66%), *à* 2 154, *en* 1 279, *dans* 538, *sur* 501, *pour* 449, *avec* 388, *par* 244, *entre* 206, *comme* 164; 5 366 have none. The prepositionless `nmod` are mostly dates and numbers (*octobre 2001, 26 octobre, Interstate 80*: 3 581 of them), the relative pronoun *dont* (285, chapter 25) and a residue of noun–noun juxtapositions (678 `NOUN` → `NOUN`).

**Juxtaposed nouns.** French has a productive but limited pattern of two nouns side by side, the second qualifying the first: *l'homme singe* (fr-ud-dev_00040: *Tarzan, l'homme singe*), *un pays membre, une date limite, une voiture balai, un roman fleuve, une pause café*. The second noun is invariable or agrees freely (*des pays membres*), and the pattern is commonest in commerce and the press. GSD has 678 noun-on-noun `nmod` without a preposition, many of them this pattern. Compounds written with a hyphen (*porte-monnaie, timbre-poste*) are single words in the treebanks.

**The *de* complement and the article.** After *de* a noun complement has an article when it refers to a particular thing (*le livre du professeur* "the teacher's book") and none when it names a kind (*un livre de professeur* "a teacher's book, a book for teachers"). With the article, *de* + *le*/*les* contracts to *du*/*des* (chapter 20, §3).

**Order of several complements.** The complements of a noun follow it, the shortest and most closely bound first: *le livre de Paul sur la guerre*; an argument of a deverbal noun before a modifier: *la destruction de la ville par l'armée en 1945*. The agent of a deverbal noun takes *par* when the patient is also expressed with *de* (*la critique du roman par Sainte-Beuve*).

**Apposition.** A noun phrase set beside another, usually between commas, is `appos`: *Adam, le berceau de la tribu*; *Tarzan, l'homme singe*. Apposition is a mark of written informative prose: 6 327 in GSD (158 per 10 000 words) against 19 per 10 000 in ParisStories.

## 5. Clauses and participles on the noun

A noun can take a relative clause (chapter 25), a participle phrase, an infinitive and a complement clause:

| type | example | UD | GSD |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| relative clause, finite | *le livre que je lis* | `acl:relcl` | 2 478 finite + 675 with a participle as head (passive or compound tense) |
| participle phrase | *les mesures prises par le gouvernement*, *un enfant parlant trois langues* | `acl` | 4 218 |
| infinitive | *une maison à vendre*, *le droit de vote* … *le droit de voter* | `acl` | 462 |
| complement clause | *l'idée que tout est possible*, *le fait qu'il parte* | `acl` (GSD), with `mark` *que* | 120 other `acl` |

(Counts of `acl` and `acl:relcl` on nouns, pronouns and names, 2026-11-06.)

**The *à* + infinitive on a noun** (*un livre à lire, une maison à vendre, un problème à résoudre*) has a missing object that is the head noun: the book is to be read. A study of these missing-object constructions argues that they behave like a passive of the infinitive — the head noun is the logical object, the logical subject remains available for control — and that the dependency is bounded: a control or raising verb can stand between *à* and the verb with the missing object (*un livre à essayer de lire*), but not a finite clause (multner-2022). The same *à* + infinitive appears after *être* (*Ce livre est à lire*), with *facile, difficile* (*un texte facile à lire*: the "tough" construction) and as a secondary predicate (*J'ai une lettre à écrire*).

**The *de* + infinitive on a noun** is the complement of a noun of intention, possibility or manner (*l'intention de partir, la possibilité de choisir, une façon de parler*); its subject is controlled by the noun's possessor or left generic.

**Complement clauses on nouns** take *que* and the mood the noun would give its verb: *le fait que* takes the indicative or, increasingly, the subjunctive; *la crainte que* the subjunctive; *l'idée que, la nouvelle que* the indicative (chapter 24).

## 6. Quantity: numerals, quantifiers, partitives

**Numerals** precede the noun and follow a definite or possessive determiner: *trois livres, les trois livres, mes trois livres*. They are `nummod` (3 640 in GSD). *Un, une* is the indefinite article and the numeral at once; GSD tags it `DET` `det` (9 976) except in counting. *Premier* and the ordinals are adjectives (`amod`).

**Quantity adverbs with *de*.** *Beaucoup de, peu de, assez de, trop de, tant de, autant de, plus de, moins de, combien de* take a noun without an article: *beaucoup de personnes* (fr-ud-test_00139: *Ca énerve beaucoup de personnes*), *peu de temps*. The article reappears when the noun is definite: *beaucoup des personnes présentes* "many of the people present". In GSD the quantity adverb is the head of the phrase: in *ils consomment beaucoup de baies* (fr-ud-train_00016) *beaucoup* is the `obj` of the verb and *baies* an `obl:arg` of *beaucoup* with `case` *de*. A tool that looks for the object noun must look one level down.

**Quantifier nouns.** *La plupart* "most" takes *des* and a plural verb: *la plupart des cas* (fr-ud-train_01641: *Dans la plupart des cas*), *La plupart des gens pensent …*. The verb agrees with the plural noun after it, not with *plupart*. *Un grand nombre de, une foule de, la majorité de* let the verb agree with either; *le peu de* with the sense intended.

**Partitives with a superlative.** *La plus intelligente de mes élèves* — a superlative with *de* picks one member of a set. A study of such partitives finds that the superlative can show feminine gender even when the noun inside the *de*-phrase is a masculine used for a mixed or unspecified group (*la plus intelligente de mes gentils professeurs*), something the quantified partitives (*trois de mes professeurs*) do not allow; the authors relate the difference to the structure of the two partitives (sleeman-2016).

**The pronoun *en* of quantity.** With a numeral or quantifier and no noun, French requires *en* before the verb: *J'en ai trois* "I have three (of them)", *Il en reste beaucoup*. English can say *I have three*; French cannot say **J'ai trois*. In UD the numeral or quantifier is then the head of the object and *en* depends on it (the clitic-climbing case of chapter 20, §10).

## 7. Phrases without a noun head

**Demonstrative and possessive pronouns** stand for a noun phrase and take the same complements: *celui de Paul* "Paul's", *celle que j'ai vue* "the one I saw", *ceux qui partent* "those who leave", *le mien, la sienne, les nôtres*. *Celui* never stands alone: it needs *de*, a relative clause or *-ci/-là*. In UD *celui* is a `PRON` that heads its complement (`nmod`, `acl:relcl`).

**Neuter free relatives.** *Ce qui, ce que, ce dont, ce à quoi* head a clause with no noun antecedent: *ce que je veux, ce dont j'ai besoin*. *Ce* is the head and the clause its `acl:relcl` (chapter 25, §7).

**Adjectives as heads.** An adjective after a determiner can stand for a noun phrase when the noun is understood: *Je prends le rouge* "I'll take the red one", *les riches, le vrai*. English needs *one*; French does not. In the treebanks such a word is tagged `NOUN` when it is lexicalized (*les riches*); elsewhere the adjective keeps its tag and heads the phrase.

**Numerals and quantifiers alone**: *Les deux sont partis. Plusieurs pensent que …. Tous sont venus.* *Tout* alone is a pronoun (*Tout est prêt*), as are *chacun, quelqu'un, personne, rien* (chapter 27 for the negative ones).

## 8. The adjective phrase

**Degree words** precede the adjective: *très grand, si grand, trop grand, assez grand, plus grand, moins grand, aussi grand, tout petit, bien content, fort aimable*. In GSD the adverbs that modify adjectives (`advmod` on an `ADJ`, 2 303 in all) are led by *plus* 574 and *très* 383, then *ne* 134 and *pas* 110 (the negation of a predicate adjective under *être*, which is the head of the copular clause). *Assez* "enough" precedes the adjective (*assez grand pour …*), unlike English *big enough*.

**Complements** follow the adjective, with a preposition fixed by the adjective: *fier de, content de, capable de, plein de, sûr de; prêt à, facile à, utile à, fidèle à; fort en, riche en; bon pour, apte à*. In GSD the prepositional dependents of adjectives (1 352) take *de* 411, *à* 321, *dans* 111, *en* 88, *pour* 87, *avec* 41. An adjective can take a clause: *content que tu sois là* (subjunctive, chapter 24), *sûr qu'il viendra* (indicative), or an infinitive: *prêt à partir, capable de comprendre, facile à dire*.

**An adjective with a complement follows its noun**: *un homme fier de son fils*, never **un fier de son fils homme*; English places the adjective first only without a complement (*a proud man*, *a man proud of his son*) and so, broadly, does French.

**The adjective as a predicate** is the head of a copular clause (`cop` *être*) or an `xcomp` of *devenir, sembler, rester, rendre, trouver* (chapter 21, §8), and it agrees with its subject or its object.

## 9. Comparison and the superlative

**The comparative** is analytic: *plus* (more), *moins* (less), *aussi* (as) before the adjective or adverb, and *que* before the standard (fraser-1921, §345):

> Il est plus grand que son frère. — Elle parle moins vite que lui. — C'est aussi cher qu'avant.

Three adjectives have a synthetic comparative: *bon → meilleur*, *mauvais → pire* (beside *plus mauvais*), *petit → moindre* (abstract: *le moindre doute*), and two adverbs: *bien → mieux*, *mal → pis* (fixed phrases). *Plus bon* is wrong; *plus bien* does not exist.

After a negative main clause *aussi* becomes *si* in careful style: *Il n'est pas si grand que son frère*. Before a numeral, "than" is *de*, not *que*: *plus de trois heures, moins de dix euros*.

**The standard of comparison** can be a noun phrase, a pronoun (strong form: *que moi, que lui*), a prepositional phrase (*plus à Paris qu'à Lyon*) or a clause. A comparative clause in careful style has the expletive *ne* and often the pronoun *le* for the compared proposition: *Il est plus grand que je ne le pensais*, *plus tard qu'on ne le croit* (chapter 27, §9).

> **fr-ud-dev_01097** · UD French GSD Nous serions deux fois plus nombreux que la tâche ne manquerait point. *we would-be two times more numerous than the task NEG would-lack not-at-all* — "We would be twice as many, and the task would still not be lacking." (The comparative clause carries a full negation *ne … point*, not the expletive *ne*.)

**In UD French GSD** the standard depends on the degree word, not on the adjective: a noun phrase is the `obj` of *plus/moins/aussi* with *que* as its `case` (93 on an adverb, 52 on an adjective among 198 comparative *que* `case`), and a clause is a `ccomp` of the degree word with *que* as `mark` (26 under *plus*). In fr-ud-dev_01097 *manquerait* is the `ccomp` of *plus*. A tool must therefore look below *plus* for the second term of a comparison.

**Correlative comparison**: *Plus il travaille, plus il gagne* "The more he works, the more he earns" — no article, no *que*, the two clauses juxtaposed (GSD fr-ud-test_00102 has a spoken-style example: *plus je vois des vidéos de ce jeu, plus je me dis que …*).

**The superlative** is the definite article (or a possessive) before the comparative: *le plus grand, la moins chère, mon meilleur ami*. When the adjective follows the noun, the article is repeated: *le puits le plus profond de France* (fr-ud-dev_00044), *la ville la plus peuplée*; before the noun, once: *la plus grande ville*. The domain of the superlative takes *de*, never *dans*: *le plus haut sommet d'Europe*. A relative clause after a superlative usually takes the subjunctive: *le meilleur film que j'aie vu* (chapter 24, §5). The absolute superlative "very" is *très, fort, extrêmement* or the old suffix *-issime* (*richissime, rarissime*), the last one familiar or emphatic.

## 10. The adverb phrase

Adverbs take degree words (*très souvent, assez bien, trop vite, beaucoup plus tard*) and a comparison standard (*plus vite que lui*). *Beaucoup* modifies a comparative, never a plain adjective: *beaucoup plus grand*, but *très grand* (**beaucoup grand*). Adverbs in *-ment* take complements with the preposition of their adjective: *conformément à la loi, indépendamment de son âge, contrairement à ce qu'il croit*. Their place in the clause is in the adjectives and adverbs chapter and in chapter 21, §9. In UD all of them are `advmod`; GSD has 14 330, ParisStories 604 per 10 000 words against GSD's 358, because the spoken language uses adverbs where writing uses noun phrases (*là, après, bon, vraiment, trop*).

## 11. The prepositional phrase

**The prepositions.** French has a small set of simple prepositions and a large set of compound ones. In GSD 57 917 words are `case`; the commonest lemmas are *de* 29 090, *à* 9 223, *en* 5 037, *dans* 3 135, *par* 2 288, *sur* 1 678, *pour* 1 555, *avec* 1 353, *comme* 530 (2026-11-06). *De* and *à* are two thirds of all prepositions and both are grammatical as much as lexical: *de* marks the noun complement, the agent of some passives, the partitive and the infinitive after many verbs; *à* the indirect object, the purpose of a noun (*tasse à café*) and the infinitive after others (chapter 23).

**Compound prepositions** are written as several words and annotated as one: the first word heads, the others are `fixed` (*à partir de, grâce à, à cause de, au lieu de, près de, afin de, en face de, au cours de, quant à*). In GSD 3 243 words are `fixed`; the commonest second elements are *que* (408 + 165 *qu'*, in conjunctions such as *alors que, bien que*), *plus* (238), *partir* (117, *à partir de*), *effet* (103, *en effet*).

**Repetition.** *À, de* and *en* are repeated before each coordinated noun phrase: *Il parle à Paul et à Marie*, *une table de bois et de fer*. Other prepositions may be shared: *pour Paul et Marie*. In the written norm the repetition of *à* and *de* is a rule; journalistic French does not always keep it.

**What the preposition governs.** A noun phrase (*sur la table*), a strong pronoun (*avec lui, pour moi, chez eux* — never a clitic), an infinitive (*pour partir, sans dire, avant de partir, après avoir mangé*: *après* takes the perfect infinitive), an adverb (*depuis hier, pour toujours, d'ici*). *En* is the one preposition that takes the present participle, making the gerund: *en sortant, en lisant*. A preposition never takes a finite clause directly: it needs *que* or *ce que* (*avant qu'il parte, à ce que je sache*), and most prepositions form a conjunction this way (*pour que, sans que, depuis que*; chapter 24).

**No stranding.** A French preposition cannot be left at the end of the clause, as English *to* in *the woman I spoke to*. In relatives and questions the whole phrase moves: *la femme à qui j'ai parlé, À qui parles-tu ?* (chapters 25 and 26). In speech, prepositions such as *avec, pour, contre, dessus, dedans* can be used without a complement when the object is recoverable: % *Il est venu avec.* % *Je suis pour.* (*avec* without a complement is regional and familiar; *pour* and *contre* are standard). These are not stranded prepositions but prepositions used intransitively, as adverbs.

**Place names.** *En* before feminine countries and before masculine ones beginning with a vowel (*en France, en Iran*), *au* before other masculine countries (*au Japon*), *aux* before plural ones (*aux États-Unis*), *à* before cities (*à Paris*); "from" is *de, du, des* in the same distribution.

## 12. Where attachment goes wrong

**Noun or verb?** A prepositional phrase after an object can attach to the noun (`nmod`) or to the verb (`obl`): *Il a vu l'homme avec le télescope*. French has the same ambiguity as English. The *de*-phrase almost always attaches to the nearest noun, so it is the least ambiguous; *à, avec, pour, dans, sur* are the hard cases.

**Chains of *de*.** *le directeur de la banque de France de Lyon* — each *de*-phrase can attach to any noun before it. The chains are a mark of administrative French and the main source of `nmod` errors in a parser.

**De + article and the indefinite *des*.** After a verb, *des* can be the indefinite plural article (*Il a des amis*) or the contraction of *de* + *les* (*Il parle des amis*); GSD splits only the second. A tokenizer has to decide between them from the verb's valency — *parler de* takes *de*, *avoir* does not — which is the reason Mova's English tokenizer leaves *des* unsplit (§13).

**Adjective or participle?** *Les documents imprimés hier* — *imprimés* is a participle with its own adjunct (`acl`), not an adjective (`amod`). A participle with a complement or an agent is `acl`.

**Postposed adjective or predicate?** *Il a trouvé la porte ouverte* — "he found the door open" (`xcomp` of *trouver*) or "he found the open door" (`amod`). The two readings have the same words and order.

## 13. How Mova handles it

**What is done.** The parser learns the noun-phrase relations from the GSD training trees through `en xpos-fill` (chapter 20, §12). `amod`, `det`, `nmod`, `nummod`, `case`, `appos` and `fixed` are all in Mova's relation set and are kept as they are. The tag mapping gives the determiners `DT` (possessives `PRP$`), adjectives `JJ`, numerals `CD`, so the tagger loses gender and number, and with it the agreement that ties an adjective to its noun.

We parsed our own sentences through the English tokenizer with the parser trained on the GSD training file (`en explain`, 12 epochs, beam 8, CPU, 2026-11-06):

| sentence | what Mova gives |
| --- | --- |
| *Le petit chat noir de ma voisine dort.* | right: *chat* `nsubj` with `det` *Le*, `amod` *petit* and *noir* on either side, `nmod` *voisine* with `case` *de* and `det` *ma* |
| *Il a acheté trois grandes maisons.* | right: *maisons* `obj` with `nummod` *trois*, `amod` *grandes* |
| *Il boit une tasse de café.* | right: *café* `nmod` of *tasse* with `case` *de* |
| *Le livre de Paul est sur la table.* | right: *table* the root, *est* `cop`, *livre* `nsubj` with `nmod` *Paul* |
| *Elle parle plus vite que son frère.* | half right: *vite* `advmod` with *plus*; *frère* is an `obl` of *parle* with `case` *que*, where GSD has it as the `obj` of *plus* |
| *C'est un très bon livre.* | wrong: *C'est* is one token, tagged as a proper noun and made the root; *livre* is its `appos`; inside the noun phrase *très* → *bon* → *livre* is right |
| *La plupart des gens sont venus.* | half right: *plupart* `nsubj` with `det` *La*; *gens* is its `appos` with *des* as `det`, because *des* is not split into *de* + *les* and so no `case` is available |
| *Le plus grand des deux frères.* | wrong: *frères* is the root and *grand* its `nsubj`; the superlative with a *de*-phrase is not recognised |

The noun phrase in isolation is parsed well; the errors come from outside it — the tokenizer (*C'est*, elided articles, *des* and *du* unsplit) and the comparison standard, whose GSD analysis is unusual.

**What is not done.**

- **Adjective position and meaning.** Nothing in Mova reads the position of *ancien, grand, propre, seul* as a difference of meaning; the frames reader (`prag/src/frames.rs`) would treat both orders alike.
- **Agreement.** Gender and number are in the treebank's FEATS but not in the PTB tags the tagger predicts, so the parser cannot use agreement to choose between two candidate heads of an adjective (*la table et le buffet anciens*).
- **The contractions.** The tokenizer does not split *du, des, au, aux* (chapter 20, §12), so in raw text the article inside a prepositional phrase is never a word of its own, and *des* as an article and *des* as *de* + *les* cannot be told apart. The treebank's 11 022 multiword tokens are the data for a French splitting rule, which is not written.
- **Quantity.** *En* + numeral and *de* + bare noun after quantity adverbs are learned only as tree shapes; the frames reader does not turn *J'en ai trois* into a quantity of a known referent.
- **Comparison.** The English frames reader has no comparison frame for French; the GSD attachment of the standard below *plus* would have to be read specially.

## 14. Sources

- Fraser, Squair & Coleman, *The New Fraser and Squair Complete French Grammar* (1921), §§330 (omission of the article), 345–349 (comparison), 351–353 (position of adjectives): `fraser-1921`.
- Metheniti, Van de Cruys, Kerkri, Thuilier & Hathout, *"Chère maison" or "maison chère"? Transformer-based prediction of adjective placement in French* (Findings of EACL 2023): `metheniti-2023`.
- Aguila-Multner & Crysmann, *French missing object constructions* (Glossa, 2022): `multner-2022`.
- Sleeman & Ihsane, *Gender mismatches in partitive constructions with superlatives in French* (Glossa, 2016): `sleeman-2016`.
- UD French GSD, Sequoia, ParisStories, Rhapsodie, UD 2.18; sentences cited by `sent_id`; counts made with `awk` over the CoNLL-U files, 2026-11-06.
- Mova: [`en/src/main.rs`](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/en/) (`xpos_of`, `explain`), [`en/src/gram.rs`](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/en/) (`Rel`), [`prag/src/frames.rs`](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/prag/).
- The full list is in [Sources](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/fr/sources/).
- [← previous 21. Clause structure](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/fr/21-clause-structure/)
- [next → 23. Complementation](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/fr/23-complementation/)
- [↑ back to Modern Standard French (fr) — a reference manual for Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/docs/languages/fr/)