Confusing grammar point from French Assimil, 2022

[warrigalgreen]

I came acoss a very confusing grammar point in lesson 22 of Assimil French, English base:

‘tous is the masculine plural of the adjective tout. Placed before a noun, it is pronounced [too], … But if it comes after a verb, it means all of you/them/everyone and is pronounced [toos].

But the examples on this page both directly follow the verb:

L1 … parce qu’ils sont tous risqués.
[toos]
L5 Je regarde tous les journaux…
[too]

So I thought, maybe they mean it’s [too] before a noun.
But then on the following page there is this example where tous is pronounced [toos] before a noun:

L12 Je suis comme tous les joueurs ; nous avons tous la même idée.
[too] [toos]


I think it’s something like if tous is modifying a noun / within a noun phrase it’s pronounced [too]. If it’s modifying the verb (?) or referring back to a plural subject, it’s [toos]. Does this sound approximately right? It's a while since I took syntax and I was never great at drawing tree diagrams. I feel like I can intuitively start to feel the difference, anyway. But I think a grammar point like this could be pretty confusing for someone without much background in language learning, or with no linguistics background. Especially with the instruction given at the end of the grammar point:
"Always check the preceding word before trying to pronounce tous!"

[Dragon27]

The proper explanation should be this: the adjective "tous" (plural masculine) is pronounced /tu/ (/tuz/ if there's a liaison), while the pronoun "tous" (plural masculine) is pronounced /tus/.
The instructions in the book is basically a confused (and over-simplified) way to try and figure out whether the word is an adjective or a pronoun. Hopefully, the learner will not take it too seriously and moves on.

[Le Baron]

But then on the following page there is this example where tous is pronounced [toos] before a noun:

L12 Je suis comme tous les joueurs ; nous avons tous la même idée.

Only the second of those is pronounced [toos]. The point of difference is that the first one is: 'I am like all (known) players'. The second is a different construction: 'We all have', as in 'all of us'. The 'tous/all' belongs to the subject (nous)' whereas in the previous one it belongs to the object (joueurs).

Also:

...parce qu'ils sont tous [tooz] risqués. (all of them)
...parce qu'ils ont tout risqué. (risked everything)

...nous sommes tous [tooz] heureux.
...nous sommes heureux pour tous les enfants

Same.

[Cainntear]

The proper explanation should be this: the adjective "tous" (plural masculine) is pronounced /tu/ (/tuz/ if there's a liaison), while the pronoun "tous" (plural masculine) is pronounced /tus/.
The instructions in the book is basically a confused (and over-simplified) way to try and figure out whether the word is an adjective or a pronoun. Hopefully, the learner will not take it too seriously and moves on.

Almost totally agree -- I just think that it's kind of understandable that the authors tied themselves in logical knots, due to a wrinkle as exemplified by Le Baron:

But then on the following page there is this example where tous is pronounced [toos] before a noun:

L12 Je suis comme tous les joueurs ; nous avons tous la même idée.

Only the second of those is pronounced [toos]. The point of difference is that the first one is: 'I am like all (known) players'. The second is a different construction: 'We all have', as in 'all of us'. The 'tous/all' belongs to the subject (nous)' whereas in the previous one it belongs to the object (joueurs).

The problem here is that "tous" doesn't necessarily look like a pronoun -- nous avons tous la même idée... so, what? Do we have two subjects here? Nous and tous? It's a weird little wrinkle, and I reckon this "tous" is a pronoun, and it's just being used here in a construction which doesn't occur with any other pronouns. I mean, you could argue that the pronoun is being used as an adverb, but that's really a bit of a stretch.

I'd personally just go with the "it's a pronoun" thing (using the example: tous sont bienvenus) and just that it's doing something here other pronouns don't do.

The thing that isn't really talked about much is that French is actually pretty open to using pronouns qualifying other noun phrases -- "ma soeur, elle est d'accord avec moi" is fairly literally "my sister, she agrees with me", but it's really equivalent to "my sister agrees with me".
In a weird way, I think this is connected with the tous thing, just not directly.

[Dragon27]

The problem here is that "tous" doesn't necessarily look like a pronoun -- nous avons tous la même idée... so, what? Do we have two subjects here? Nous and tous? It's a weird little wrinkle

I think it acts pretty similar to the English "all" in this meaning, which is (also) classified as a pronoun in the wiktionary:

Pronoun
all
2. Everyone.
...
We all enjoyed the movie.

"Nous avons tous la même idée", word for word: "We have all the same idea" (of course, in English it would be more natural to say "We all have...").
French wiktionary classifies the word as "Pronom indéfini".
I don't know if there are different theoretical frameworks in which the word "all" is not a pronoun, but whatever it's called, the difference is still there.

[Cainntear]

The problem here is that "tous" doesn't necessarily look like a pronoun -- nous avons tous la même idée... so, what? Do we have two subjects here? Nous and tous? It's a weird little wrinkle

I think it acts pretty similar to the English "all" in this meaning, which is (also) classified as a pronoun in the wiktionary:

Pronoun
all
2. Everyone.
...
We all enjoyed the movie.

"Nous avons tous la même idée", word for word: "We have all the same idea" (of course, in English it would be more natural to say "We all have...").

I hadn't even thought of the English "we all".

In my defence, though, "we all" at least doesn't split the "we all" with a verb in the same way "nous avons tous" does, which is maybe why it feels so different to me.

French wiktionary classifies the word as "Pronom indéfini".
I don't know if there are different theoretical frameworks in which the word "all" is not a pronoun, but whatever it's called, the difference is still there.

Well actually I'm starting to feel it's kind of adverbial, which is where I think the original poor description came from.

We all eat cake -- nous mangeons tous du gâteau
We always eat cake -- nous mangeons toujours du gâteau

In English, is there really any common usage where "all" functions as a pronoun? It seems a bit archaic (if not totally wrong) to actually say "all are ..."
Quite a lot of the issues with grammatical terminology is that people have been pretty loathe to abandon traditional systems -- systems that were very often designed to describe Latin and have become less and less suitable to describe English over time.

[Dragon27]

In English, is there really any common usage where "all" functions as a pronoun? It seems a bit archaic (if not totally wrong) to actually say "all are ..."

Specifically, common usage where "all" stands for multiple persons, not really, I believe. "Everybody" (and variations) is used instead. The other example in the wiktionary is "A good time was had by all". Can't think of any example where "all" is the (sole) subject with the meaning "everybody", it's much easier when "all" means things, not people (wiktionary, again "All that was left was a small pile of ash").
But the traditional translation of the famous motto "Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno" (whose French version "Tous pour un, un pour tous" was made popular by Alexandre Dumas) is "One for all, all for one".

[Kraut]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0Frm7TthkM

[Adrianslont]

In English, is there really any common usage where "all" functions as a pronoun? It seems a bit archaic (if not totally wrong) to actually say "all are ..."

Specifically, common usage where "all" stands for multiple persons, not really, I believe. "Everybody" (and variations) is used instead. The other example in the wiktionary is "A good time was had by all". Can't think of any example where "all" is the (sole) subject with the meaning "everybody", it's much easier when "all" means things, not people (wiktionary, again "All that was left was a small pile of ash").
But the traditional translation of the famous motto "Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno" (whose French version "Tous pour un, un pour tous" was made popular by Alexandre Dumas) is "One for all, all for one".

“All are expected to attend the …”
“All are welcome”
“All are examples of … »

Everybody is more common and more modern but all as a pronoun doesn’t seem wrong or archaic to me - but I am not young.

[Kraut]

The proper explanation should be this: the adjective "tous" (plural masculine) is pronounced /tu/ (/tuz/ if there's a liaison), while the pronoun "tous" (plural masculine) is pronounced /tus/.
The instructions in the book is basically a confused (and over-simplified) way to try and figure out whether the word is an adjective or a pronoun. Hopefully, the learner will not take it too seriously and moves on.

"Ils ont tous acheté un dictionnaire." You would normally expect a soft /z/ with liaison here, but there isn't. There is /tus/ plus glottal stop /a/. See the youtube video.