Price - A Comprehensive French Grammar

Blackwell Reference Grammars
General Editor: Glanville Price

The Blackwell Reference Grammars are essential companions for students of modern languages at senior secondary school and undergraduate level. The volumes provide a comprehensive survey of the grammar of each language and include plentiful examples. The series will cover the major European languages, including French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian.

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2008 by Glanville Price

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First published 1950; second edition 1956; third edition 1986; fourth edition 1993; fifth edition 2003
This sixth edition published 2008 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd

1 2008

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Price, Glanville.
A comprehensive French grammar / Glanville Price. 6th ed.
p. cm. (Blackwell reference grammars)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4051-5384-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4051-5385-0
(pbk. : alk. paper) 1. French languageGrammar. I. Title.

PC2112.P75 2007
448.2421dc22

2007029190

A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For further information on
Blackwell Publishing, visit our website:
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Preface

This new edition of A Comprehensive French Grammar corresponds in most respects to the previous edition (2003). The principal change consists in the addition of a section on Register and medium (13) and of references to these topics here and there throughout the text. Elsewhere in the Introduction, the sections on Capitals (4), Punctuation (5) and Hyphens (8) have been substantially modified and expanded. I have also taken advantage of this new edition to update the bibliography and to make a few other modifications to the text. However, apart from the addition of the new section (13) and the consequential combining of the previous sections (13) and (14) as (14), the paragraph numbering and the pagination of the last edition have been retained.

I am grateful to all those colleagues and others from whose comments and advice I have benefited, not least to my wife who has read successive editions in typescript and made helpful observations based on her experience of teaching advanced students of French. Professor Maria Manoliu of the University of California at Davis made a number of suggestions for improving my discussion of points of grammar in the last edition. This new edition has benefited greatly from advice offered by Dr Mari C. Jones of the University of Cambridge. None of these, of course, are in any way responsible for any errors or omissions that may remain.

G.P.

Selective Bibliography

This list of works likely to be of interest to the advanced student of French includes only titles of which the most recent edition is dated 1993 or later.

Ball, R. 2000. Colloquial French Grammar. A Practical Guide. Oxford: Blackwell.

Baylon, C. and Fabre, P. 2003. Grammaire systmatique de la langue franaise, 3rd edn. Paris: Nathan.

Grevisse, M. 1993. Le Bon Usage. Grammaire franaise, 13th edn, recast by A. Goosse. Paris and Louvain-la-Neuve: Duculot.

Hawkins, R. and Towell, R. 2001. French Grammar and Usage, 2nd edn. London: Arnold.

Hollerbach, W. 1994. The Syntax of Contemporary French: A Pedagogical Handbook and Reference Grammar. Lanham, MD, New York and London: University Press of America.

Le Goffic, P. 1994. Grammaire de la phrase franaise. Paris: Hachette.

Le Querler, N. 1994. Prcis de syntaxe franaise. Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen.

LHuillier, M. 1999. Advanced French Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lang, M. and Perez, I. 2004. Modern French Grammar: A Practical Guide. London: Routledge.

Pougoise, M. 1998. Dictionnaire de grammaire et des difficults grammaticales. Paris: Armand Colin.

Atkins, Beryl C. et al. (eds) 1998. Collins Robert French-English English-French Dictionary. London: HarperCollins, Paris: Le Robert.

Baumgartner, E. and Mnard, P. 1996. Dictionnaire tymologique et historique de la langue franaise. Paris: LGF.

Carney, F. (ed.) 1993. Grand dictionnaire franais-anglais / anglais-franais; French-English / English-French Dictionary, 1, Franais-anglais / French-English, 2, Anglais-franais / English-French. Paris: Larousse.

Catach, N. 1994. Dictionnaire historique de lorthographe franaise. Paris: Larousse.

Corrard, M.-H. and Grundy, V. (eds) 2003. The Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary, 3rd edn, ed. J.-B. Ormal-Grenon and N. Pomier. Paris: Hachette, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rey-Debove, J. and Rey, A. 2006. Le Nouveau Petit Robert, rev. edn. Paris: Le Robert.

Van Roey, J. Granger, S. and Swallow, H. 1998. Dictionnaire des / Dictionary of faux amis, franais-anglais, English-French, 3rd edn. Paris and Brussels: Duculot.

Ayres-Bennett, W. 1996. A History of the French Language through Texts. London: Routledge.

Ayres-Bennett, W. and Carruthers, J., with Temple, R. 2001. Problems and Perspectives. Studies in the Modern French Language