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I've grown accustomed to there almost always being an article before nouns, even if that article is contracted with another word. I know that there are exceptions, such as proper nouns and negations. But I didn't expect there to be an exception in this sentence.

Si tu avais assez d'argent, voyagerais-tu?

I would have expected to see the partitive article: either du argent or de l'argent. Why is the article lost?

Gilles 'SO nous est hostile'
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ktm5124
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2 Answers2

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You've likely already encountered “beaucoup de” or “peu de” used without an article many times. “Assez de” is similar, but unlike the former I don't think it can ever be used with an article.

“De” is a preposition in these constructs and the partitive (du, de la, and even the indefinite plural des) is always omitted after it. You can think about other cases like:

Il a besoin d'eau.

Il parle de moments difficiles.

Stéphane Gimenez
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Some other examples:

recueillir un maximum d'informations

une poignée de données non confidentielles

envoyer un grand nombre de photos

As you can see, words that denote a quantity, such as "assez / suffisamment / beaucoup / maximum / poignée", to name but a few, have a noun immediately follow "de" without a definite article in between.

Con-gras-tue-les-chiens
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