Thread:User talk:Internoob/The 14th sense you added to à/reply (2)

Indeed, that's better. However, in my opinion, what remains to be said is mentioned in the usage notes: "à" introduces an indirect object (envoyer qq chose à qq'un) or a second object. I am not grammatically savvy enough to tell you more but my feeling is that this sense 14 (naming the owner or the provenance) is not the same as sense 6 (belonging to). Contrary to sense 6, this "à" is intimately bound to the verb and it introduces more the origin of an action (from ...), or the indirect object of an action, than the belonging of the direct object.

In this respect, the bolded translation, albeit correct, is misleading. To make myself clear: "il a volé la voiture à son père" would translate to "he stole the car from his father" (origin). On the other hand, "he stole his father's car" (appartenance: il a volé la voiture de son père) is very close but doesn't exactly bear the same meaning.