French language Q&A Forum

Why is "and the accordion used to touch her chin" translated as "et l'accordéon lui touchait le menton" and not as "et l'accordéon la touchait le menton"?

When toucher is used with a noun as an object the pronoun is "la", e.g. "it touches Marie" is "ça touche Marie" and "it touches her" is "ça la touche" so why is "lui" correct in the case above? It seems to imply that the verb was "toucher à".

I thought I understood this and that you have to base gender and number on the subject (first noun) as it was done here in the examples. So I would say, and have in fact been saying "Elle est plus grande que son frère" and "Il est plus grand que sa sœur".

Now I have a workbook that told me to write:

"Un village est plus petitE qu'une ville"---> Using the gender of ville, the second noun in the comparison, rather than the gender of village. That's wrong, right?

It also told me to write "Paris est plus grandE que Bordeaux". The only explanation for this I have is that they are "La ville de Paris/Bordeaux" here and hence feminine. Does that sound right?

I think it's time to recycle my workbook...

Why is it sometimes before the noun and sometimes after when used as an adjective? And I see some patterns in it's placement as an adverb but if you have any advice on that as well that would be great.