French Grammar and Usage

Long trusted as the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and user-friendly grammar book 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 uses, illustrated by numerous examples taken from contemporary French, and distinguishes the most common forms of usage, both formal and informal. This book's key features are as follows: - 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 and 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 this book and offers additional resources at https://routledgelearning.com/frenchgrammarandusage

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.

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