We study the following problem: For which Tychonoff spaces $X$ do the free topological group $F(X)$ and the free abelian topological group $A(X)$ admit a quotient homomorphism onto a separable and nontrivial (i.e., not finitely generated) group? The existence of the required quotient homomorphisms is established for several important classes of spaces $X$, which include the class of pseudocompact spaces, the class of locally compact spaces, the class of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}$-compact spaces, the class of connected locally connected spaces, and some others.

We also show that there exists an infinite separable precompact topological abelian group $G$ such that every quotient of $G$ is either the one-point group or contains a dense non-separable subgroup and, hence, does not have a countable network.

For a Tychonoff space $X$, let $\mathbb{V}(X)$ be the free topological vector space over $X$, $A(X)$ the free abelian topological group over $X$ and $\mathbb{I}$ the unit interval with its usual topology. It is proved here that if $X$ is a subspace of $\mathbb{I}$, then the following are equivalent: $\mathbb{V}(X)$ can be embedded in $\mathbb{V}(\mathbb{I})$ as a topological vector subspace; $A(X)$ can be embedded in $A(\mathbb{I})$ as a topological subgroup; $X$ is locally compact.

We prove that every (locally) contractible topological group is (L)EC and apply these results to homeomorphism groups, free topological groups, reduced products and symmetric products. Our main results are: The free topological group of a θ-contractible space is equiconnected. A paracompact and weakly locally contractible space is locally equiconnected if and only if it has a local mixer. There exist compact metric contractible spaces X whose reduced (symmetric) products are not retracts of the Graev free topological groups F(X) (A(X)) (thus correcting results we published ibidem).