Breakdown of Il a déplacé les coffres-forts sans casser les abat-jour.
il
he
sans
without
avoir
to have
le
him, it (masculine direct object pronoun)
casser
to break
déplacer
to move (change location of)
le coffre-fort
the safe (strongbox)
l'abat-jour
the lampshade (m)
Questions & Answers about Il a déplacé les coffres-forts sans casser les abat-jour.
Why do both parts of coffres-forts end with an 's'?
In French compound nouns, when the combination is a noun plus an adjective, both parts typically become plural. Here, coffre (a noun meaning trunk or chest) and fort (an adjective meaning strong) both take an 's'.
Why doesn't abat-jour get an 's' at the end to make it plural?
Abat-jour is made of a verb (abat, from abattre, to strike down or block) and a noun (jour, meaning light or day). In traditional French grammar, the verb part of a compound noun never takes a plural 's'. The noun part only takes an 's' if it logically refers to multiple things. Since a lampshade blocks 'light' (an uncountable concept), jour remains singular. Note that the 1990 spelling reform accepts abat-jours, but the traditional invariable spelling used in this sentence is still extremely common.
Why is casser used instead of a present participle like 'cassant' to mean 'breaking'?
In French, prepositions like sans, pour, de, and à are always followed by a verb in its infinitive form. While English uses the '-ing' form after a preposition ('without breaking'), French strictly requires the infinitive (sans casser).
Shouldn't the past participle déplacé have an 's' because he moved multiple safes?
No, because the sentence uses the auxiliary verb avoir and the direct object (les coffres-forts) comes after the verb. In the passé composé, the past participle only agrees with a direct object if that object is placed before the verb.
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