Lost your password? Please enter your email address. You will receive a link and will create a new password via email.

What is the capital of Tunisia?

Please type your username.

Please type your E-Mail.

Please choose the appropriate section so the question can be searched easily.

Please choose suitable Keywords Ex: question, poll.

Type the description thoroughly and in details.

What is the capital of Tunisia?

Does a subject clause requires “ce” ?

Constructions of the type “voter contre le casino est me trahir” are not in use.

It can be deduced from LBU that it is a possible construction when the subject is an infinitive but that for the least it has to be rare otherwise.

(user LPH’s bold type) Infinitif attribut.
a) Sans préposition. I L’infinitif attribut est assez fréquent quand le sujet est lui-même un infinitif, lequel est ordinairement repris par « ce ».

  • Vouloir, c’est POUVOIR (maxime courante).
  • Aimer ce n’est point nous REGARDER l’un l’autre mais REGARDER ensemble dans la même direction (SAINT EXUPÉRY, Terre des hommes, VIII, 3).

Sans ce :

  • Choisir est EXCLURE (DUTOURD, cit. Togeby, § 1216).

Cette absence est beaucoup plus
fréquente si l’équivalence est niée
:

  • Mourir n’est pas MOURIR! […] c’est
    CHANGER ! (LAMART., Mort de Socrate, Pl., p. 91.)
  • Plaisanter n’est pas
    RÉPONDRE (COLETTE, Maison de Claud., XXII).

It would’t even sound perfectly correct to write this.

  • Voter est me trahir, moi.

However this would sound acceptable to me, that is, I would tend to think of it as being in use but only rarely.

  • Ne pas voter est me trahir.

Nevertheless, I would feel more confortable with the form that includes “ce”.

  • Ne pas voter c’est me trahir.

This construction (without “ce”) seems to have some sort of legitimity when it involves only two infinitives and preferably when used to enunciate a pithy remark about life at large.

  • Trahir est haïr.
  • Partir est mourir.

However, one finds that it remains rare the construction using “ce” being almost the unique one. “Partir c’est mourir… is common but “partir est mourir … is not found at all.

In all cases of use of “partir” and “mourir” found in Google’s whole literature, where only the two infinitives are used (6 cases), the pronoun “ce” is used: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

 

Leave a comment

What is the capital of Tunisia?