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Elle tient beaucoup à cette vieille photo.

Elle tient beaucoup à cette vieille photo.
She is very attached to this old photo.
From Lesson 443:Verbs that change meaning with prepositions·French

Questions & Answers about Elle tient beaucoup à cette vieille photo.

Doesn't tenir normally mean 'to hold'? Why does it mean 'to be attached to' here?
Yes, when used with a direct object (without a preposition), tenir means 'to hold' (e.g., Elle tient la photo = She is holding the photo). However, adding the preposition à creates a major meaning shift. Tenir à plus a noun means to value, to care deeply about, or to be attached to that thing.
If I wanted to replace 'this old photo' and just say 'She is very attached to it', which pronoun would I use?
You would use the pronoun y. Because the verb phrase tenir à is followed by a non-living thing (cette vieille photo), y is the correct pronoun to replace the entire à + noun phrase. The sentence becomes: Elle y tient beaucoup.
What if she were attached to a person instead of a photo? Would the pronoun change?
Yes, absolutely! While y is used for inanimate objects, if you want to say 'She is very attached to him', you cannot use y. Instead, you keep the preposition à and use a stressed pronoun (disjunctive pronoun) after it: Elle tient beaucoup à lui.
Why is beaucoup placed exactly where it is, separating the verb and the preposition?
In French, adverbs that modify a verb usually follow the conjugated verb directly. Here, beaucoup modifies how strongly she feels (tient), so it must sit right after the verb, even if it interrupts the verb and its indirect object (à cette vieille photo).
Just as a quick refresher, why does vieille come before the noun?
Vieille means 'old' and falls under the classic BAGS rule (Beauty, Age, Goodness, Size) for adjectives that come before the noun. Remember that its masculine forms are vieux for most nouns, but vieil before a vowel or mute H (like un vieil ami).

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