The Adverbial Pronoun: Y

In order to avoid unnecessary repetition, we use adverbial pronouns and object pronouns in our sentences to replace chunks of information that have already been identified. We have already seen en and CODs which we use with transitive-direct verbs.

There is another set of short words that we use to replace larger chunks of information when we are dealing with transitive-indirect verbs—words that require an indirect object in French (aller à, répondre à, donner à, etc.). These are the adverbial pronoun y and COIs. We will look at COIs in more detail momentarily. For now, let’s focus on y.

When we are replacing à + nouns with transitive-indirect verbs, we will replace the whole phrase with the adverbial pronoun y before the verb. While this is most often used with places, à + any noun that is not a person will be replaced by y.

Modèles :

Je vais à la boulangerie.
J’y vais.

Allons-nous à la fête ?
Oui, allons-y!

Il répond à la question.
Il y répond.

Habite-t-elle à New York ?
Oui, elle y habite.