Breakdown of Il a acheté des jetons et il en a beaucoup perdu.
il
he
et
and
des
some (plural indefinite)
avoir
to have
acheter
to buy
beaucoup
a lot, much
perdre
to lose
en
of it / of them (quantity)
le jeton
the token
Questions & Answers about Il a acheté des jetons et il en a beaucoup perdu.
Why is beaucoup placed before perdu instead of at the end of the sentence?
Just like the pronoun tout (everything) that you are currently studying, short adverbs of quantity like beaucoup (a lot), rien (nothing), and trop (too much) are placed between the conjugated auxiliary verb (a) and the past participle (perdu) in compound tenses like the passé composé. You cannot say "il en a perdu beaucoup".
What does en mean here, and why is it necessary?
The pronoun en translates to "of them" in this context. It replaces the phrase des jetons (chips) from the first half of the sentence so you don't have to repeat it. In French, whenever you use a word of quantity (like beaucoup) to talk about a previously mentioned noun, you are grammatically required to include en.
Why is en placed before a?
In French, object pronouns like en must be placed directly in front of the conjugated verb. Because this sentence uses the passé composé, the conjugated verb is the auxiliary a (has). Therefore, en goes right before it: il en a.
Since he lost multiple chips (des jetons), shouldn't the past participle be perdus with an "s"?
Normally, if a direct object pronoun comes before the verb in the passé composé, the past participle has to agree with it. However, the pronoun en is a strict exception to this rule. When en is the preceding object, the past participle (perdu) never adds an "s" or "e", even when it refers to a plural noun like des jetons.
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