French language Q&A Forum

Should "Montre-moi les mains!" really be considered wrong? I understand you put that in this lesson as an example of reducing ambiguity, with "tes mains", but I definitely don't see it as something to be taken as a wrong answer in a quiz.

If I'm correct, we do the exact same thing in Spanish, and both "Muéstrame tus manos" y "Muéstrame las manos" would be correct. There is no ambiguity whatsoever (i.e. no sane person would wonder whose hands we're asking the person to show). Is it really really different in French?

I mean, it is one thing to try to get students to answer what you taught them, and a very different thing to reject right answers (especially when this very same lesson covers using definite articles for this). 

I read somewhere that ne ... pas and ne ...point were the first negative constructions in the evolution of the French language. I can just imagine someone trekking through the woods in Old French times and saying, "Not another step."  Or a tired monk in some scriptorium copying over an illegible text and saying, "Not another period."

The lesson seems to indicate that this separation is  'allowed' but 'irregular'.

 However it seems frequent and intrinsic enough in some translations to deserve identifying and defining as a rule of syntax.

If the 'possession' is the 'object' of the verb in the following clause then it is separated from dont and put after the verb in that clause. 'Dont' here is like a relative pronoun joining two clauses. All the examples support this  observation.

Tu as jeté la chaussure dont le talon est cassé.You threw away the shoe with the broken heel [lit. whose heel is broken]

BUT???Tu as jeté la chaussure chère dont  j'ai cassé  le talon.

Les enfants, dont je connais la maman, sont bien élevés.
François, dont j'ai rencontré la femme le mois dernier