I have just heard the following sentence in the movie "Le Fabuleux Destin de Amélie Poulain":
C'est beau, la vie.
I have found out that there is also a song with this name.
Shouldn't "beau" agree with the feminine noun "vie" ?
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1 Answer
"Beau/belle" must agree with "ce", written "c'" in this locution; as the gender of "ce" is neuter, the form of the adjective must be "beau", the masculine form and also the form for the neuter gender.
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I'm really confused now. I thought that c' was an ellision of "ça", the neutral indefinite pronom. Sep 3, 2020 at 12:17
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@AlanEvangelista You'll find the confirmation and plenty od examples here:cnrtl.fr/definition/ce. Apparently this elision for "ça" does not exist: (ça a marché) books.google.com/ngrams/… cnrtl.fr/definition/%C3%A7a– LPHSep 3, 2020 at 12:23
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@AlanEvangelista: Consider that the negation of such phrases is "ce n'est pas" and not "ça n'est pas". I need to double-check, but there should be a difference between "ce" as a sort of dummy pronoun and "ce" as a demonstrative adjective. LPH: That's in keeping with my understanding of French, but I did see a text recently where the author wrote things like "ç'avait."– MaroonSep 4, 2020 at 6:28
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@Maroon En effet, on trouve cette forme, mais elle est trompeuse (books.google.com/ngrams/…); voir cette référence: books.google.fr/…; (1/2)– LPHSep 4, 2020 at 6:58