Hi! Can you please explain to me the place of "beaucoup" in the two following examples:
I learn french now and in my textbook i've found two sentences which confused me a little bit:
1. Nous avons beaucoup travaillé hier.
2. Nous avons lu beaucoup d'articles sur les problèmes écologiques.

So in the first example the word "beaucoup" is before the verb, and in the second after the verb. Is there any grammatical explanation to that?

Many thanks in advance!

Question

Hi! Can you please explain to me the place of "beaucoup" in the two following examples:
I learn french now and in my textbook i've found two sentences which confused me a little bit:
1. Nous avons beaucoup travaillé hier.
2. Nous avons lu beaucoup d'articles sur les problèmes écologiques.

So in the first example the word "beaucoup" is before the verb, and in the second after the verb. Is there any grammatical explanation to that?

Many thanks in advance!

Answer

Hello ! In your examples, "beaucoup" doesn't refer to the same kind of words, so that's why it's different.
In your first sentence, "beaucoup" is related to a verb. Plus it's "passé composé", so in this case, its place has to be between the "auxiliaire" and the "participe passé".
In the second sentence, "beaucoup de" is related to a noun, here "articles" so it has to be after the verb and before the noun it relates to.
Hope it helped!
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Some examples :
Ce midi, j'ai beaucoup mangé. (beaucoup is related to "avoir mangé")
Ce midi, j'ai mangé beaucoup de cookies. (beaucoup is related to "cookies")

Answer

The word "Beaucoup" represents the amount, so in the first sentence "beaucoup" represents the amount of work and in the second sentence "beaucoup" represents the amount of article ! The verb hasn't importance for this word.
(Sorry, my english is not very good, I hope that helps) :)