Personne..ne + pronom d'objet direct: les règles de l'accord

Question

J'essaye de construire la phrase suivante:

On peut plus en parler plus tard, étant donné que personne d'autre ne m'a pas encore demandé de venir l'aider. (en: We can discuss it more later, since nobody has asked me to help them yet.)

Ce qui me rend pas très sûr de la grammaticalité de la phrase est le pronom d'objet direct. En anglais, on utilise them, qui est en fait au pluriel, même si ce n'est pas grammaticale (ça devient de plus en plus un remplaçant pour him or her, grammaticalement la forme 'neutre' du singulier, parce que him or her est très lourd même à l'écrit).

Et donc en français j'ai envie de mettre au singulier l', parce que personne..ne est au singulier ; c'est logique. Mais mon esprit anglophone veut que cela soit les aider, parce qu'en réalité je fais référence au groupe de personnes (pluriel) qui ne m'ont pas encore demandé.

Qu'est-ce qui est correcte dans ce cas ? Je ne peux plus rationellement réfléchir... je suis perdu entre les deux langues.

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I am trying to construct the following sentence:

On peut plus en parler plus tard, étant donné que personne d'autre ne m'a pas encore demandé de venir l'aider. (en: We can discuss it more later, since nobody has asked me to help them yet.)

What makes me not very sure about the grammaticality of the sentence is the direct object pronoun. In English, we use them, which is in fact plural, even if it is not grammatical (it is becoming more and more a substitute for him or her, grammatically the 'neutral' form of the singular because him or her is very dense even in writing).

And so in French I want to put in the singular l', because personne..ne is singular; it's logical. But my anglophone mind wants it to be les aider, because in fact I am referring to the group of people (plural) who have not asked me yet.

What is correct in this case? I can't think about it rationally anymore... I am lost between the two languages.

Answer 1

On peut en parler plus tard,

or, a stretch,

On peut en parler plus, plus tard,

would work. Your version, “plus en parler plus tard” seems wrong to me (native French).

étant donné que personne d'autre ne m'a encore demandé de venir l'aider.

I dropped the “pas”.

Also “personne” is singular in French. In English the absence of potential things is plural (there is no cars), but in French if there's none, there definitely isn't many. To me, it's more natural. :-)

Answer 2

If we start from your English sentence:

We can discuss it more later, since nobody has asked me to help them yet.

In the second part, we have nobody coupled with them, in French personne and some unknown pronoun...

Let’s see some simpler sentences:

• Personne ne l’a su → Nobody learnt about it
• Personne ne l’a vu → Nobody saw him/her/it _{(eventually them when uncertain of the gender)}
• Personne ne les as vu → Nobody saw them

If we now wonder how many people would get help, if help was requested, it would likely be one at a time for individual work, or likely a team at a time (i.e. many people) for team work. French would lean towards singular in the first case, and plural in the second:

• ...personne ne m’a encore demandé de l’aider → people come seek help one by one
• ...personne ne m’a encore demandé de les aider → groups of people come to seek help together

The latter could be reworded with aucune équipe instead of personne, but then more questions and more answers arise with the collective noun (discussed in more details here):

• ...aucune équipe ne m’a encore demandé de l’aider/les aider

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However, and just as a side-note, I would not word the sentence like this, though it might be a strictly personal point of view. In speech, and among many many variations, I would probably choose something close to:

• On pourra en reparler plus tard, puisque personne [n’]est encore venu demander de l’aide.