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In English reason why is redundant. Prof. John Lawler's answers this twice .

Equivalent phrase in French is la raison QUE,
but grandson's French teacher told him use la raison pour laquelle = 4. the reason for which.

So why's "reason that" right in English, but la raison QUE wrong in French?

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    Because French is a different language and different conventions apply. English is more tolerant of ellipsis than many other languages, so constructions that are perfectly acceptable in those can feel overspecified/redundant in English and vice versa. Rationalisations constructed for the benefit of language learners should be seen as aide-mémoires specific to learning a specific language, not fundamental truths about how grammar works in every language. – Cairnarvon Mar 15 '20 at 22:27
  • Every language has its own phonology and its own grammar, as well as its own vocabulary. You just can't generalize from one language rule to any other language. – jlawler Mar 16 '20 at 16:54
  • you can very well generalize from one rule to another, if you know general rules. A language learner generally does not know the rules. As a rule, they learn idioms with a very limited scope, many of them, and if they find one that is general enough, they use it everywhere and often wrong. It's so terribly complicated, many people doubt there are any general rules (contrary to the Minimal Program). – vectory Mar 16 '20 at 20:21
  • I do by the way not understand a single example or gloss on this page. You might want to see language learning.SE and improve your question format. Nobody learns anything from this question about french or english. And it invites wrong answers, such as the comments above. – vectory Mar 16 '20 at 20:24
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la raison que means something else => la raison qu'il propose = the reason he proposes.

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  • But that's also true of English... – rchivers Mar 16 '20 at 13:53

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