5th Edition
French Grammar and Usage + Practising French Grammar
Long trusted as the most comprehensive, up-to-date and user-friendly grammar available, French Grammar and Usage is a complete guide to French as it is written and spoken today. It includes clear descriptions of all the main grammatical phenomena of French, and their use, illustrated by numerous examples taken from contemporary French, and distinguishes the most common forms of usage, both formal and informal.
Key features include:
• comprehensive content, covering all the major structures of contemporary French
• user-friendly organisation offering easy-to-find sections with cross-referencing and indexes of English words, French words and grammatical terms
• clear and illuminating examples to help students at all stages of their degree
• useful indications of what cannot be written or said as well as what can.
Revised and updated throughout, this new edition offers updated examples to reflect current usage, headers to include chapter number and section parts as well as cross-referencing for easier reference and explanations of notoriously difficult points of grammar. This edition includes references to changes in French spelling now being introduced across French education and to social change towards inclusive writing.
The combination of reference grammar and manual of current usage is an invaluable resource for students and teachers of French at the intermediate to advanced levels.
This Grammar is accompanied by Practising French Grammar: A Workbook (available to purchase separately ISBN 978-1-032-44140-5) which features related exercises and activities. An Instructor and Student Resource site also accompanies the book and offers additional resources at https://routledgelearning.com/frenchgrammarandusage.
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Practising French Grammar: Practising French Grammar, fifth edition, offers a set of varied and accessible exercises for developing a practical awareness of French as it is spoken and written today.
Practising French Grammar provides concise summaries of key grammatical points at the beginning of each exercise, as well as model answers to the exercises and translations of difficult words. The lively examples and authentic texts have been updated to reflect current usage.
This is an invaluable resource for students and teachers of French at the intermediate to advanced levels.
This book can be used alone or as the ideal companion to the fifth edition of French Grammar and Usage by Richard Towell, Marie-Noëlle Lamy, and Roger Hawkins (available to purchase separately ISBN 978-1-032-44463-5). An Instructor and Student Resource site also accompanies the book and offers additional resources at https://routledgelearning.com/frenchgrammarandusage.
French Grammar and Usage 5e:
Guide for the user
Glossary of key grammatical terms
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgements for the second edition
Acknowledgements for the third edition
Acknowledgements for the fourth edition
Acknowledgements for the fifth edition
1. Nouns
2. Determiners
3. Pronouns
4. Adjectives
5. Adverbs
6. Numbers, measurements, time and quantifiers
7. Verb forms
8. Verb constructions
9. Verb and participle agreement
10. Tense
11. The subjunctive, modal verbs, exclamatives and imperatives
12. The infinitive
13. Prepositions
14. Question formation
15. Relative clauses
16. Negation
17. Conjugations and other linking constructions
Appendix 1: Orthographic Conventions
Appendix 2: Nouvelle Orthographe
Further Reading
Index
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Practising French Grammar 5e:
Acknowledgements
Guide for the user
1 Nouns
1–3 Types of noun
4–9 Gender of nouns
10 Compound nouns
11 Plural forms of nouns
12 matin/matinée, etc.
13 How good is your memory?
2 Determiners
1–2 Definite article
3–5 Determiners with parts of the body
6–9 Indefinite and partitive articles
10 Omission of articles
11 Demonstrative and possessive determiners
12 How good is your memory?
3 Personal and impersonal pronouns
1–3 Personal subject pronouns
4–6 Impersonal subject pronouns
7 on and l’on
8–9 Object pronouns
10–11 Pronominal and non-pronominal verbs
12 Pronouns with parts of the body
13 Use of y and en
14 Combinations of object pronouns
15 Stressed pronouns
16 Demonstrative and possessive pronouns
17 How good is your memory?
4 Adjectives
1–4 Position of adjectives
5 Adjectives used as nouns and adverbs
6–7 Masculine, feminine and plural forms of adjectives
8–10 Agreement, comparative and superlative forms of adjectives
11 Creative writing
5 Adverbs
1–4 Types of adverb
5 Comparative and superlative forms of adverbs
6 Forms of tout
7–9 Time, place and sentence-modifying adverbs
10 Location of adverbs
11 How good is your memory?
6 Numbers
1–3 Cardinal numbers
4 nombre, chiffre and numéro
5 Using en with numbers and quantifiers
6 Simple arithmetic
7–8 Ordinal numbers
9 Hundreds, thousands, etc.
10–12 Measurements, comparisons, dates
13 Quantifiers
14 How good is your memory?
7 Verb forms
1–3 Present, imperfect, simple past
4 Future and conditional
5–6 Subjunctive
7 Imperative
8–11 Irregular verbs
8 Verb constructions
1–3 Intransitive and transitive verbs
4–8 Passives and pronominal verbs
9 Impersonal verbs
10 How good is your memory?
9 Agreement
1 Subject–verb agreement
2 Agreement of the past participle with être
3–6 Agreement of the past participle with preceding direct objects
7 Agreement of the past participle with pronominal verbs
8 Putting it all together
10 Tense
1 Present tense
2 Past tenses
3–6 The future and conditional
7 The past anterior
8 si and the sequence of tenses
9 Putting it all together
11 The subjunctive, modal verbs and exclamatives
1–6 The subjunctive
7 Use of devoir, pouvoir, savoir and falloir
8 Exclamatives
9. Imperatives
10.How good is your memory?
12 Infinitives
1 Infinitive complements to other verbs
2 Infinitive complements to adjectives
3 Infinitive complements to nouns
4 Infinitives in instructions and as polite commands
5 How good is your memory?
13 Prepositions
1 Prepositions with multiple meanings
2 Other prepositions
3 Working with prepositions from English into French
4 Prepositions in context
14 Questions
1–2 Yes/no questions
3–7 Information questions
8 Indirect questions
9 Putting it all together
15 Relative clauses
1–3 qui, que and lequel
4 dont and duquel
5 Relative où
6–7 Use of ce qui, ce que, etc.
8 Translating ‘whoever’, ‘whatever’, ‘however’
9 Putting it all together
16 Negation
1–3 ne … pas
4–6 ne… que, ne… aucun and ne … jamais
7 ne… plus and ne… guère
8 ne… rien, ne … personne and ne … ni… ni
9 Combining negators
10 How good is your memory?
17 Conjunctions and other linking constructions
1 Coordinating conjunctions
2–8 Subordinating conjunctions
9–10 Past participles as linking devices
11 Present participles and adjectives
12 Present participles and gerunds
Answers to the exercises
Glossary of grammatical terms
Biography
Richard Towell is Emeritus Professor of French Applied Linguistics at the University of Salford, UK.
Marie-Noëlle Lamy is Emeritus Professor of Distance Language Learning at the Open University, UK.
Roger Hawkins is Emeritus Professor of Language and Linguistics at the University of Essex, UK
