Breakdown of Plus tard, Marie espère faire de la recherche sur l’environnement dans un grand laboratoire moderne.
Questions & Answers about Plus tard, Marie espère faire de la recherche sur l’environnement dans un grand laboratoire moderne.
In French, espérer (to hope) is followed directly by an infinitive verb, with no preposition in between:
- espérer faire quelque chose – to hope to do something
- espérer venir – to hope to come
- espérer réussir – to hope to succeed
Using à or de after espérer is incorrect in standard French:
✗ espérer à faire, ✗ espérer de faire.
So Marie espère faire de la recherche… literally follows the pattern [espérer] + [infinitive].
Both exist, but they’re used a bit differently:
faire de la recherche = to do research in general, as an activity or field (uncountable idea)
- like English “do research” (not a research).
faire des recherches = to do (some) investigations, inquiries, specific pieces of research
- like English “do some research” / “make inquiries”.
In your sentence, Marie wants a research career, a general activity, so faire de la recherche is more natural.
de la here is a partitive article. It’s used for “some” or “an unspecified amount of” something that you can’t really count:
- faire de la recherche – to do (some) research
- boire de l’eau – to drink (some) water
- acheter du pain – to buy (some) bread
You cannot say:
✗ faire recherche – French normally needs an article.
✗ faire la recherche – that would mean “do the research” (a specific, identified research), which isn’t the idea here.
So de la shows it’s an activity in general, not a specific, singled‑out research project.
With recherche, several prepositions are possible, but the meaning changes slightly:
faire de la recherche sur l’environnement
= to do research on the environment (typical scientific phrasing; the topic is the environment).faire de la recherche de l’environnement
sounds wrong here. de can be used after recherche in some very specific structures (e.g. la recherche de solutions = the search for solutions), but with a concrete, direct object.
When you mean “research on/about a subject,” sur is the standard choice:
- un article sur l’environnement – an article about the environment
- des études sur le climat – studies on the climate
So sur l’environnement is the natural preposition with recherche + topic.
This is because of elision. The noun environnement is masculine, so its article is le. But:
- When le or la comes right before a word starting with a vowel or silent h, French drops the vowel and replaces it with an apostrophe:
- le + environnement → l’environnement
- la + école → l’école
This is purely a pronunciation/spelling rule to make the sentence flow more easily.
Plus tard is an adverbial phrase of time (“later”). In French, you can place it:
At the beginning for emphasis or style:
Plus tard, Marie espère faire de la recherche…
(Later on, Marie hopes to do research…)At the end:
Marie espère faire de la recherche plus tard.
Both are grammatically correct. Starting with Plus tard is simply a stylistic choice and very common in narratives when you want to set the time frame first.
French often uses the present tense to express current thoughts, feelings, or plans about the future:
- Marie espère faire de la recherche plus tard.
= “Marie hopes to do research later.”
Her hope exists now (present), even though the action (faire de la recherche) is in the future (plus tard).
You don’t say:
✗ Marie espérera faire de la recherche plus tard
unless you literally mean “Marie will hope to do research later” (her feeling of hope starts in the future), which is not the usual idea.
French has relatively fixed adjective order. Many common, short, and often subjective adjectives (like grand, petit, beau, jeune, vieux, etc.) usually go before the noun. Most others, especially more descriptive/technical ones, go after.
- grand (big / important) → usually before the noun
- moderne (modern) → usually after the noun
So the natural order is:
- un grand laboratoire moderne
(a big / major modern laboratory)
Saying:
✗ un laboratoire grand moderne sounds unnatural or wrong in standard French.
It can mean either, depending on context:
- un grand laboratoire moderne
- could mean “a large modern laboratory” (physically big),
- or “a major / prestigious modern laboratory” (well‑known, important).
Without extra context, both readings are possible. In texts about careers or ambitions, grand often suggests importance or prestige.
Grammatical gender in French is largely arbitrary and must be memorized:
- un laboratoire – masculine (un, un grand laboratoire)
- une recherche – feminine (de la recherche: note that de la is “of the” for a feminine noun in the partitive form).
There isn’t a reliable rule to guess gender just from looking at these particular words. Learning each noun with its article (e.g. un laboratoire, une recherche) is the safest strategy.
Yes, but the nuance changes:
faire de la recherche sur l’environnement
– sounds like formal, often scientific research, possibly in a lab or academic setting (a research career).étudier l’environnement
– more “to study the environment,” which could mean studying it at school/university, not necessarily doing scientific research.
Since the sentence mentions un grand laboratoire moderne, faire de la recherche is the most natural, scientific sounding choice.
With places, dans usually means “inside / within” a physical space:
- dans un laboratoire – inside a laboratory, working there.
à is often used with cities, some institutions, or as a more abstract “at”:
- travailler à l’hôpital – work at the hospital (institution)
- travailler dans un hôpital – work inside a hospital building
For a laboratory, dans un laboratoire is the normal way to say you work inside that physical lab.
✗ à un laboratoire is not idiomatic here.