This reference grammar of French has been written specifically to cater for the needs of English speakers. Such grammars are seldom read like novels. Usually, readers either want information on a specific grammatical point. ('In what order do the pronouns me and le occur in imperatives?'; 'How do I translate "should" into French?'), or they want information about the behaviour of a class of grammatical phenomena such as 'pronouns', or 'modal verbs', or 'negation', and so on.
For this reason, and in common with most other grammars, French Grammar and Usage is divided into a number of chapters which deal with broad classes of grammatical phenomena; there are 17 chapters in all. But within each chap ter there are two further subdivisions: the first into particular phenomena, and the second into specific grammatical points concerning those phenomena. This gives rise to three kinds of heading in the text. For example:
| Chapter 2 | Determiners |
| Chapter 2.6 | Omission of the article |
| Chapter 2.6.6 | Omission of the article with nouns in apposition |
| Chapter 8 | Verb constructions |
| Chapter 8.2 | Intransitive constructions |
| Chapter 8.2.2 | Intransitive verbs and auxiliary être |
The chapters and their major subdivisions are listed in the Contents at the begin ning of the book. If you want information about a broad class of grammatical phenomena, you will probably find it most quickly by looking there. At the end of the book we have provided a more detailed Index where key French and English words and expressions are listed, along with grammatical points. The items listed there will direct you to a specific section of the grammar dealing with the property you want to know about.
If you are not familiar with grammatical terms, try the Glossary of key grammatical terms, which comes just after this Guide for the user. We briefly define common terms such as subject, object, transitive verb, intransitive verb, phrase, clause, and so on, illustrating them from French.
We have focused on one variety of French: standard European French. This is the variety used by university-educated speakers throughout metropolitan France. Within this variety we have distinguished two media of communication: written French and spoken French. In the normal case, we describe grammatical phenomena which are appropriate both to the spoken and the written forms of standard European French.
But in some cases particular constructions may be appropriate either to one or the other, but not both. For example, the simple past tense form of verbs – je partis ‘I left’, elle mangea ‘she ate’ – is normally restricted to written French. Questions formed by putting a question word at the front of a sentence without subject- verb inversion – Où il est, le patron? ‘Where’s the boss?’ – are nor mally restricted to spoken French. Where there are such restrictions we say so. Where we say nothing, assume that a construction is possible in both written and spoken French.
All languages have constructions and vocabulary which are appropriate to some contexts but not others. For example, in English when people are writing in an academic or literary style (as they do in grammars!), they tend not to use contracted forms. They would write sentence (1) rather than sentence (2):
In spoken English, however, you are much more likely to hear (2) than (1). These context-related differences in the form of a single variety of language are often called ‘registers’. A variety of language has a number of different regis ters appropriate to different contexts.
In French Grammar and Usage we have distinguished just two broad registers: formal French, which is the kind of French used in contexts where native speakers are careful in what they say and write, where they employ grammatical and stylistic devices which they may have learned at school (like the simple past, the imperfect subjunctive, or the inverted forms of questions). We also refer to informal French, which is used when speakers are engaged in relaxed, spontaneous communication and are less attentive to the form of what they are saying.
Where particular grammatical phenomena are typical only of formal French, or of informal French, but not both, we say so. Where we say nothing, assume that a construction is possible both in formal French and informal French.
It is important to be aware that informal French is not the same thing as ‘slang’ or ‘dialect forms’. Informal French is just as much standard French as formal French is – it is the relaxed register used by speakers of standard educated European French. ‘Slang’ and ‘dialect forms’ are different, non-standard, varieties. On odd occasions we may signal some usages as being non-standard by using the term colloquial.
One of the problems facing any writer of a grammar of French is deciding what weight to give to the view of those French grammarians, legislators, educators, newspaper columnists and others who wish to prescribe how French should be written and spoken, within the framework of a description of how French writers and speakers actually use French. We have tried to steer a middle path in this respect. Where a grammatical phenomenon is clearly widespread and normal in the French of educated speakers and writers, but in conflict with prescriptive norms, we have described the usage. An example is the widespread omission of ne in ne . . . pas ‘not’, frowned upon by some, but in widespread use in informal spoken French (see Chapter 16.4).
Where there is variability or hesitation in the use of a grammatical phenomenon by speakers or writers, or where there is a change in progress in the language which has not yet been fully accepted, and there is an established prescriptive norm, we have presented the prescriptive norm. For example, agreement of the past participle with preceding direct objects, as in La lettre que j’ai écrite ‘The letter I wrote’, is subject to considerable variability in some contexts. Some speakers make the agreement, some do not. In this case we have followed the prescriptive norms (see Chapter 9.3).
In many places in this grammar, we have presented examples not only of what native speakers do say and write, but also of what they do NOT say and write. Such ungrammatical sentences are preceded by an asterisk*. For example:
Round brackets placed around a French or English word or part of a word in an example mean that it is optional, and its presence or absence has little or no effect on the meaning. For example: