Word
La conférence à laquelle nous avons assisté a été annulée par le directeur.
Meaning
The conference we attended was canceled by the director.
Part of speech
sentence
Pronunciation
Course
Breakdown of La conférence à laquelle nous avons assisté a été annulée par le directeur.
être
to be
nous
we / us (object pronoun)
avoir
to have
annuler
to cancel
Questions & Answers about La conférence à laquelle nous avons assisté a été annulée par le directeur.
Why is it à laquelle here instead of contracting to something like auquelle?
Why do we need the preposition à in the first place? In English we just say 'attended', not 'attended to'.
In French, the verb meaning 'to attend' an event is assister à. Because the verb requires à, that preposition has to move in front of the relative pronoun, giving us à laquelle (literally 'to which'). If you used a simple relative pronoun like que, the sentence would be grammatically incorrect because the required à would be missing.
Why does annulée have an extra -e at the end?
This is the passive voice in the passé composé (a été annulée). In the passive voice, the past participle always agrees in gender and number with the subject of the sentence. Since the subject is La conférence (feminine singular), annulé gets an extra -e.
If annulée agrees with the feminine noun conférence, why doesn't assisté get an extra -e too?