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Thank you for this beautiful exercise where there was almost a one-to-one correspondence between the English and French, and instructions were given where they were due. I enjoyed completing it. I have a few questions.

1. In this sentence: 'mon mari m'avait offert une belle édition de la pièce d'Oscar Wilde "Salomé”,' in this sentence, can I enclose the word "Salomé” between guillemets? Is there a rule in French when to use inverted commas and when to use guillemets to quote something?

2. When a creative work is produced/done by someone or some entity, can we also use the preposition 'par'? For example: un documentaire par Radio-Canada? Un roman par X, des œuvres par Y. In this case precisely, la pièce par Oscar Wilde?

3. I used the same sentence as stated here: 'ces motifs exotiques et étranges qui paraissaient couvrir la toile', but the system corrected me from 'couvrir' to 'recouvrir'.

4. This is most important to me: I struggle to figure out when to use a 'pronom tonique' and when to use 'indirect object pronoun.' For example: 
'un musée qui lui était entièrement dédié à Paris', I am tempted to write: 'un musée qui était entièrement dédié à (can I use consacré à as well here?) lui à Paris' in keeping with literal translation from English. Is it always the case that 'à qqn' / 'de qqn' is always replaced by an IOP? In a similar fashion, can't I say 'Je me vous souviens' instead of 'Je me souviens de vous'?

5. Is the adverbial pronoun y only present in the "Il y avoir" to translate the "There is" structure? To translate, "There exists...", "There remains...", we don't need that?

I am sorry for the lengthy set of questions. Thank you for your patience.

Anne Davies · Answer

I’m going to have a stab at answering, as no one else has. Incidentally, although the site doesn’t let you add line breaks as you type, you can do so after writing your paragraph to improve legibility.

1 No expert on titles, but here’s a link on their typography:

https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/fr-typography-of-titles-italics-or-guillemets.2159561/

2 It’s my understanding that authorship of a work is expressed in French as une oeuvre de xxx and par xxx is an anglicism to avoid.

3 Recouvrir tends to be used for covering a surface eg recouvert de neige and couvrir is more when something is placed on top of another:

https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/couvrir-recouvrir.317488/

4 "..un musée qui lui était dédie" is just the way to express "verb + à + person" for most verbs that require à. Therefore, you couldn’t use lui to denote any other preposition as you suggest - a tonic pronoun is required instead (de lui, chez eux, pour elle etc).

BUT… some verbs and expressions do need "à + tonic pronoun" eg penser à lui. This also applies when a verb is preceded by me, te, se, nous or vous, so it includes all the pronominal verbs (Il s’intéresse à eux) and constructions like "Elle nous envoie au principal —> elle nous envoie à lui"

https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/indirect-objects-2/

A link on the other uses of tonic pronouns

https://www.lawlessfrench.com/grammar/stressed-pronouns/

5 Maybe best to consider il y a an idiomatic phrase and not try to parse it.