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Personne ne s'attend à ce que vous soyez un expert

I don't see what the 'ce que' is doing here and how removing it would change the meaning?

Stéphane Gimenez
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Hasen
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    Related https://french.stackexchange.com/questions/1678/when-do-we-use-ce-que-instead-of-que – lemon Sep 20 '17 at 14:07
  • Not really related actually, as the two expression are really different – Anne Aunyme Sep 20 '17 at 14:44
  • Yeah that is not related, its obvious what the purpose of 'ce que' is in his examples. If anyone else wants to post an answer explaining what the 'ce que' means in my example they are welcome. – Hasen Sep 20 '17 at 15:11
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    @Hasen, to me, this is the exact same meaning concerning "ce que". Are you sure the problem is not about "ne s'attend à"? – lemon Sep 20 '17 at 15:24
  • If it can help, a "word by word" English translation: "Nobody is expecting that you are an expert". Here "ce que" = "that".... "Nobody is expecting you as an expert" can be "personne ne vous attend en tant qu'expert". – lemon Sep 20 '17 at 15:38
  • Ce que normally means 'what' and that's what it means in the link you gave. Like in this similar example: "à ce que je sache" = "to my knowledge" or more directly translated "to what I know" where again 'ce que' = what. – Hasen Sep 20 '17 at 16:39

2 Answers2

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Just a quick reminder:

  • "un expert": nominal group ("an expert")

  • "vous êtes un expert": verbal group ("you are an expert")

After "Personne ne s'attend à" one doesn't expect a verbal group: what is expected is a COI ("Complément d'Objet Indirect") which has to be a substantive. It can be a nominal group:

Personne ne s'attend à sa propre mort.

Or an infinitive group:

Personne ne s'attend à trouver une solution.

Or a verbal group introduced by "ce que". In that case the verb becomes a subjonctive:

Personne ne s'attend à ce qu'il pleuve.

If you remove "ce que" the sentence doesn't mean anything else, it just becomes incorrect as you have a non-valid COI.

Anne Aunyme
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  • Ok...not sure what you're talking about. I didn't want to learn about how to teach grammar, I just need to know simply what its there for. – Hasen Sep 20 '17 at 15:09
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    As a french, this answer seems pretty accurate. Because the question is a grammatical one. "Ce que" means nothing, it brings a meaning to differents parts of a sentence. You cannot say "Personne ne s'attend à vous êtes un expert", it's totally meaningless in french. – Loïc Di Benedetto Sep 20 '17 at 15:31
  • "As a french, this answer seems pretty accurate." What does that mean? IN French? OK I get that its just wrong without it....it just doesn't help me much. I guess I'll get used to it with more listening over time then. – Hasen Sep 20 '17 at 16:40
  • What does "the" mean in English? Can you give a definition of it? No, because it is just a grammatical tool. The same goes for "ce que": no proper meaning, just a grammatical tool. I explained when you had to use it, because that's what you need to know about it. – Anne Aunyme Sep 21 '17 at 08:07
  • 'The' is equivalent to 'le' or 'la' in French, doesn't cause any issues. 'Ce que' normally equates to 'what' but here it somehow doesn't. I didn't want to know 'when' I have to use it, I want to know what it means in the sentence. I'll know 'when' to use by a natural feeling when I've had enough input. But I will never get there if I don't understand what I'm listening to. I guess some people come here wanting to know grammatical rules, but I wasn't looking for that 'cos it doesn't help with anything. – Hasen Sep 21 '17 at 17:40
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    If you think every word have an exact equivalent between French and English (or more generally between any two languages) you are doing a big mistake. Btw you didn't give a definition of "the": "le/la" are also meaningless syntaxic tools. You have to accept that "ce que" is one too because by trying to find a meaning where there is none you will just loose your time. – Anne Aunyme Sep 22 '17 at 09:22
  • @Anne Aunyme Le and la are certainly not meaningless, not sure where you're going with that. No more meaningless than 'the' anyway. Not everything has an equivalent in another language but very often they can be translated directly. e.g. Le chien = The dog. Grammatical tools may not be things that be defined, seen and experienced but they have a purpose nonetheless. – Hasen Apr 13 '18 at 03:57
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Ce que is mandatory here. Removing it would lead to a very incorrect sentence:

Personne ne s'attend à vous soyez un expert.

When s'attendre à is directly followed by a verb, that verb must be at the infinitive, e.g.:

Personne ne s'attend à recevoir un expert.

A noun, pronoun or nominal complement can also follow s'attendre à like:

Personne ne s'attend à la venue d'un expert.

Personne ne s'attend à lui.

If you want to append a subordinate clause containing a conjugated verb, that clause needs to be introduced by a conjunction. With direct transitive verbs, that conjunction is commonly que, e.g.:

Personne ne souhaite que vous soyez un expert.

Tous attendent que vous soyez un expert.

With indirect transitive verbs, the prepositions de and à cannot be directly followed by que simply because de que or à que are forbidden combinations in French so a ce is inserted. You can think of this ce as a pronoun for the following clause but it is really part of the compound subordinate conjunction ce que.

Personne ne s'attend à ce que vous soyez un expert.

When the clause is omitted, the pronoun cela (or ça) replaces it:

Personne ne s'attend à cela.

Here are other examples following the same pattern:

Je me suis habitué à ce que vous soyez un expert.

Je ne m'attendais pas à ce que vous soyez un expert.

Je me réjouis de ce que vous soyez un expert.

The previous form is slightly outdated and formal and is usually simplified to:

Je me réjouis que vous soyez un expert.

but this simplification hasn't occurred yet with s'attendre à so:

Personne ne s'attend que vous soyez un expert.

is incorrect, although it might be heard in very relaxed spoken French.

Note that the following sentence, while looking like the previous ones using de ce que, is a different construction:

Je m'étonne de ce que vous dites.

Here, ce que is what was discussed in the question yours was wrongly suspected to be a duplicate of.

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