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What is the capital of Tunisia?

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What is the capital of Tunisia?

English OF/FROM vs. French DE

Your sentence is interesting, because as you suppose, “de” can have both the English meanings you gave as an example, though your example “1” would rather be used with “reçu“:

J’ai reçu de l’argent de mon frère“: Here, “de mon frère” is not a complément de nom to “argent“: in fact, this bold “de” goes with “reçu” and not with “argent”: It would be as correct to write this sentence like this: “J’ai reçu de mon frère de l’argent“, or to replace “de” by “par”: “J’ai reçu de l’argent par mon frère“.

In your example “2”, “J’ai de l’argent de mon frère”, the bold “de” links “argent” to “mon frère” as a complément de nom.

To summarize, the difficulty you show comes from the fact that the preposition “de” can have two different meanings: “de mon frère” car either mean “from my brother” or “of my brother“, as you rightly supposed, but in your example 1, a French speaker would not say your sentence without adding “reçu”, as quoted above.

 

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What is the capital of Tunisia?