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Thinking...
Questions answered by our learning community with help from expert French teachers
15,030 questions • 32,589 answers • 1,027,296 learners
For a change of pace I decided to use seulement instead of ne...que for the following sentence:
"J'ai eu deux chats." . Write "I had only two cats.": ________ deux chats. My answer J'ai au seulement deux chats... was marked wrong! I understand Chris' response to another use that the focus of the exercise in ne que..but in many of the tests (choose ALL the correct answers) they had both the 'seulement' version and the 'ne que' version as GOOD answers.
Unless my answer has an error which I am overlooking ,or there is a point of grammar why seulement is unacceptable here, I would like to suggest a revision of the test marking to accept seulement.
There may be sound reason why learning to use seulement is beneficial, even if 'ne que' is considered better in formal writing. Based on further reading, I have found that SEULEMENT ALSO can VARY IN PLACEMENT ..to differently focus the restriction. Rules for seulement: Cannot be placed BEFORE the conjugated auxiliary/ does not have to be placed (unlike many adverbs) IMMEDIEATELY after the conjugated verb/can be placed just like the 'que' before the 'target word ' being restricted.
So it seems : I had ONLY two cats= je n'ai eu que deux chats OR J'ai eu seulement deux chats.
I ONLY had two cats == Je n'ai qu'eu deux chats or J'ai seulement eu deux chats.
As usual I stand ready to be corrected!
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Example:
Protège d'une muraille épaisse and not
Par une muraille épaisse
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