"Il ne mange que des yaourts bio."
Translation:He eats only organic yogurts.
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Isn't this a negative sentence? If yes, why not "de" instead of "des" , or does it have to be a simple negation?
According to the text Current French; St. John, Jones, Stickland; Copp Clark Publishing, 1950s or 1960s? :
4.10 The indefinite and partitive articles are replaced by "de" before a noun used as the direct object of a verb when a negation implies the absence of what the noun represents. (Note that this replacement does not apply for "ne ... que".)
In other words, after "ne... que", indefinite and partitive articles do not change to "de" unlike the change that happens after other negative adverbs.
That rule suggests why "ne ... que" is sometimes described as a restriction rather than a negation.
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I would rarely use the plural "yogurts" in English, even to mean "multiple little pots of yogurt," and not here to mean yogurt in general.
This is one of a number of situations where what is natural in French is not natural in English. Yes, the French are used to eating little containers of yogurt. In English, the plural form is normally lost in translation and it does nothing to insist on "yogurts" here. That is why the singular (or "mass noun") form is accepted.
Would someone be so kind as to explain the logic of this sentence? Is it just idiomatic? It would seem to translate to something close to "He no eat that of yogurts bio".
I think I need help understanding how "ne" sentences work.
"Ne... que" expresses a restriction or limitation, and it means "only".
- il ne mange que... = il mange seulement... = he only eats (some)...
I got the listening exercise. It wasn't natural to think yaourts should be plural, but I think the sound of the partitive pronoun should have given me the clue