Object Pronouns
While going through a Memrise course this evening, I came across the following sentence:
"Il ne lui a pas laissé"
I am not completely familiar with object pronouns yet, but I have a slight feeling that lui should be replaced with l' in this case. Can anyone confirm (or deny) this?
2 Comments
The sentence is wrong. We have to say "Il ne l'a (la+a = l'a) pas laissée" (feminine, as I suppose that a "he" didn't leave a "she") Let me add: him/her is lui as an indirect object: "je suis allé avec lui = I went with him; him/her is lui as a direct object: I see him = je le vois, I see her = je la vois. ... and thanks for the lingot
Actually both sentences are correct and have different meanings.
"Il ne lui a pas laissé" - here lui is an indirect object pronoun which never elides. It means "he didn't leave [it] to him/her", but it sounds incomplete as the direct object is missing.
For instance you could say "Il ne lui a pas laissé le temps de réagir" = "He didn't give him/her time to react"
"Il ne l'a pas laissé(e)" means "He didn't leave him/her/it" (note that it's not about leaving someone here, 'to leave someone' in French is 'quitter quelqu'un'. Laisser and leave both have a lot of secondary meanings in their language, and very often one will not correspond to the other when translating). Some examples:
"Il ne l'a pas laissé sur la table" = "He did not leave it on the table"
"Il ne l'a pas laissée faire" = "He did not let her do it"
