Breakdown of Ce refus, le client l'a trouvé totalement inadmissible !
avoir
to have
ce
this (before a noun)
trouver
to find
le client
the client / the customer
le
him, it (masculine direct object pronoun)
totalement
totally
inadmissible
unacceptable
le refus
the refusal
Questions & Answers about Ce refus, le client l'a trouvé totalement inadmissible !
Why does the sentence start with Ce refus, only to replace it with l' later on?
This is a very common structure in spoken and emphatic French called dislocation. By pulling the object (Ce refus) to the very beginning of the sentence, the speaker places strong focus on it. Because it was moved out of its normal position after the verb, the direct object pronoun l' must be inserted before the verb to keep the grammar intact.
Would the spelling of trouvé change if the noun at the beginning were feminine?
Yes! The pronoun l' acts as a direct object placed before the verb in the passé composé. In French, the past participle must agree in gender and number with a preceding direct object. Since Ce refus is masculine singular, trouvé takes no extra endings. If it were a feminine noun like Cette situation, you would add an -e: le client l'a trouvée.
Does the adjective inadmissible agree with the subject (le client) or the object (ce refus)?
It agrees with the object, ce refus. The phrase uses the structure trouver [quelque chose] [adjectif] (to find [something] [adjective]). The adjective describes the thing being evaluated, which is represented by the pronoun l'. Since un refus is masculine singular, the adjective is masculine singular (though inadmissible naturally ends in an -e in both masculine and feminine forms).
Given the current lesson, why isn't the subjunctive used here to express such a strong subjective opinion?
The subjunctive is only triggered when you have a subordinate clause introduced by que (for example: Le client a trouvé inadmissible que vous fassiez ça). Because this sentence simply evaluates a direct object (l') with an adjective (inadmissible) and has no que clause, there is no secondary verb to put into the subjunctive!
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