In the sentence" il me reste des croissants du weekend". Why isn't it " ils me restent...". Is it a set phrase? Thanks
As you put it, this is a set phrase (une tournure impersonnelle). The personal pronoun "il" does not stand for anything: français facile.
(TLFi) II être encore présent, disponible; subsister
B. − [En empl. impers., le suj. réel désigne un animé ou un inanimé concr. ou abstr.]
- Il reste (+ subst.).
♦ Quand les aunes eurent disparu, il restait les souches (Hémon, M. Chapdelaine, 1916, p. 63).
♦ L'Europe était alors [au temps de Montesquieu] le meilleur des mondes possibles (...). La science était déjà assez belle, et les arts très délicats; il restait de la religion (Valéry, Variété II, 1929, p. 63).
♦ Il reste les autres: les fidèles qui demeurent à mi-côte, qui luttent, succombent, se relèvent (Mauriac, Journal 2, 1937, p. 189).
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1It's misleading to call this a fixed phrase; the rule is entirely generalizable. – Luke Sawczak♦ Oct 15 '20 at 19:30
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@LukeSawczak I can't figure out what you apply "entirely generalizable" to; you mean perhaps that you can conjugate these verbs ( "il existe", "il est", "il faut", …). Yes you can do that for those verbs, but those impersonal turns are nevertheless fixed to an important degree, even if we can't see in them perfectly fixed expressions: the subject is only "il", no other pronoun will do, no noun is usable as subject, the meaning is not derived from the words (semantically fixed), for instance. – LPH Oct 15 '20 at 23:23
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@LukeSawczak Here is a source that uses this very term as an identifying term for certain impersonal constructions of this sort: bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zwh6tfr/revision/2. – LPH Oct 15 '20 at 23:24
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When you said "fixed" I understood it as saying that "il reste" is a fixed expression, whereas this syntax is a general one for many verb types. If you meant that this syntax only works with "il" and no other pronouns, yes, that's true. – Luke Sawczak♦ Oct 16 '20 at 2:06
Here, rester is used in an impersonal form.
That means the pronoun il (only third person singular allowed) is just a place holder and doesn't represent anything, like in il pleut (it's raining).
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Merci beaucoup de m'aider avec ma première question. Je crois que je me souviens un peu l'utilisatin de cette phrase. – Bluelion7 Oct 13 '20 at 21:30
As others have already answered, it's an impersonal form. You might like to note a few others which behave in a very similar way:
- il existe plusieurs solutions (several solutions exist)
- il suffit de trois semaines pour finir le projet (three weeks is enough to finish the project)
- il arrive parfois des choses étranges (strange things happen sometimes)
- il en résulte deux conséquences (there are two consequences of this)
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2A possible translation of "strange things are happening": "il se passe des choses étranges" – LPH Oct 14 '20 at 17:20