Practising FRENCH Grammar second edition Roger Hawkins, Richard Towell Marie-Noëlle Lamy and 00-FrenchGrammar-UK-Prelims-ccp: 9780340991251 10/8/11 13:03 Page i Practising FRENCH Grammar second edition 00-FrenchGrammar-UK-Prelims-ccp:9780340991251 10/8/11 13:03 Page ii 00-FrenchGrammar-UK-Prelims-ccp: 9780340991251 10/8/11 13:03 Page iii Practising FRENCH Grammar second edition Roger Hawkins, Richard Towell and Marie-Noëlle Lamy Routledge Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK 00-FrenchGrammar-UK-Prelims-ccp: 9780340991251 10/8/11 13:03 Page iv First published 1997 by Hodder Education This edition published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2010, Roger Hawkins, Marie-Noëlle Lamy and Richard Towell. Published by Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-0-340-99125-1 Typeset by Phoenix Photosetting, Chatham, Kent 00-FrenchGrammar-UK-Prelims-ccp: 9780340991251 10/8/11 13:03 Page v Contents Acknowledgements ix Guide for the user xi 1 Nouns 1-3 Types of noun 1 4-9 Gender of nouns 6 10 Compound nouns 15 11 Plural forms of nouns 16 12 matin/matinée, etc. 19 13 How good is your memory? 20 2 Determiners 1-2 Definite article 21 3-5 Determiners with parts of the body 23 6-9 Indefinite and partitive articles 28 10 Omission of articles 32 11 Demonstratives and possessives 33 12 How good is your memory? 35 3 Personal and impersonal pronouns 1-3 Personal subject pronouns 36 4-6 Impersonal subject pronouns 41 7 on and l'on 44 8-9 Object pronouns 45 10-11 Pronominal and non-pronominal verbs 48 12 Pronouns with parts of the body 49 13 y and en 50 14 Combinations of object pronouns 51 15 Stressed pronouns 52 16 How good is your memory? 53 4 Adjectives 1-4 Position of adjectives 55 5 Adjectives used as nouns and adverbs 60 6-7 Masculine, feminine and plural forms of adjectives 62 8-10 Agreement, comparative and superlative forms of adjectives 64 11 Creative writing 67 00-FrenchGrammar-UK-Prelims-ccp: 9780340991251 10/8/11 13:03 Page vi vi Practising French Grammar 5 Adverbs 1-4 Types of adverb 68 5 Comparative and superlative forms of adverbs 70 6 tout 71 7-9 Time, place and sentence-modifying adverbs 72 10 Location of adverbs 75 11 How good is your memory? 76 6 Numbers 1-3 Cardinal numbers 77 4 nombre, chiffre, numéro 80 5 en with numbers and quantifiers 80 6 Simple arithmetic 81 7-8 Ordinal numbers 81 9 Hundreds, thousands, etc. 83 10-12 Measurements, comparisons, dates 84 13 Quantifiers 87 14 How good is your memory? 88 7 Verb forms 1-3 Present, imperfect, simple past 89 4 Future and conditional 93 5-6 Subjunctive 94 7 Imperative 96 8-11 Irregular verbs 97 8 Verb constructions 1-3 Intransitive and transitive verbs 101 4-8 Passives and pronominal verbs 103 9 Impersonal verbs 111 10 How good is your memory? 112 9 Agreement 1 Subject-verb agreement 113 2 Agreement of the past participle with être 114 3-6 Agreement of the past participle with preceding direct objects 115 7 Agreement of the past participle with pronominal verbs 121 8 Putting it all together 123 10 Tense 1 The present tense 126 2 Past tenses 127 3-6 The future and conditional 132 7 The past anterior 137 00-FrenchGrammar-UK-Prelims-ccp: 9780340991251 10/8/11 13:03 Page vii Contents vii 8 si and the sequence of tenses 138 9 Putting it all together 139 11 The subjunctive, modal verbs and exclamatives 1-6 The subjunctive 141 7 Modal verbs 147 8 Exclamatives 148 9 How good is your memory? 148 12 Infinitives 1 Infinitive complements to other verbs 150 2 Infinitive complements to adjectives 153 3 Infinitive complements to nouns 154 4 Infinitives in instructions and commands 155 5 How good is your memory? 157 13 Prepositions 1 Prepositions with multiple meanings 159 2 Other prepositions 162 3 Working with prepositions from English into French 164 4 Prepositions in context 171 14 Questions 1-2 Yes/no questions 172 3-7 Information questions 173 8 Indirect questions 179 9 Putting it all together 179 15 Relative clauses 1-3 qui, que and lequel 181 4 dont and duquel 184 5 où 186 6-7 ce qui, ce que 187 8 Translating 'whoever', 'whatever', etc. 189 9 Putting it all together 190 16 Negation 1-3 ne...pas 191 4-6 ne ... que, ne ... aucun and ne... jamais 193 7 ne... plus and ne... guére 194 8 ne ... rien, ne ... personne and ne... ni... ni 195 9 Combining negators 196 10 How good is your memory? 197 00-FrenchGrammar-UK-Prelims-ccp: 9780340991251 10/8/11 13:03 Page viii viii Practising French Grammar 17 Conjunctions and other linking constructions 1 Coordinating conjunctions 198 2-8 Subordinating conjunctions 199 9-10 Past participles as linking devices 209 11-12 Present participles and gerunds 210 Answers to the exercises 213 Glossary of grammatical terms 259 00-FrenchGrammar-UK-Prelims-ccp: 9780340991251 10/8/11 13:03 Page ix Acknowledgements The authors and publisher would like to thank the following for permission to use copyright material in this book: Libération for the extract from the article '1,8 million de dollars' (6 March 2009, accessed via the internet) in Chapter 1; Femme Actuelle for the recipe 'Tarte sucrée aux blettes' (No. 620,12-18 aout 1996: 68) in Chapter 1; Editions Gallimard for extracts from Patrick Modiano, Rue des boutiques obscures (Collection Folio pp. 40-1, 55-6 © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1978) in Chapters 1 and 2, Raymond Queneau, Exercices de style (Collection Folio pp. 7,22,32,49-50,116, © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1947) in Chapters 1,4,6 and 10, Alexandre Jardin, Le Petit Sauvage (Collection Folio pp. 68-9, © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1992) in Chapter 3, Jacques Prévert, Paroles (the poem 'Pour faire le portrait d'un oiseau', Collection Folio p. 155, © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1949) in Chapter 4; Le Nouvel Observateur for the extract 'Le travail noir' (© Le Nouvel Observateur) in Chapter 1; United Feature Syndicate, Inc. for car toons from ça ne va pas, Charlie Brown (Copyright © 1970 United Feature Syndicate, Inc.) in Chapters 1, 5 and 14; Editions La Découverte for the extract from A. Le Diberder and N. Coste-Cerdan, La T élévision (Collection Repéres pp. 5-6, © Editions La Découverte, Paris, 1986) in Chapter 1; Maison- Bricolages for the extract from Le Guide pratique (p. 31, 1988) in Chapter 1; Larousse-Bordas for the extract from Gérard Mermet Francoscopie 1987 (p. 7, © Larousse, Paris, 1986) in Chapter 2; the Estate of Georges Simenon for extracts from Maigret se trompe (pp. 7-9, 111-113, © 1953, Estate of Georges Simenon, all rights reserved. First published by Presses de la Cit é, Paris, 1953) in Chapters 3 and 14, and L'Ecluse (pp. 49-59, © 1977, Estate of Georges Simenon, all rights reserved. First published by Presses-Pocket, Paris, 1977) in Chapter 13; Le Monde, for the article 'Lille poursuit son enrreprise cul- turelle et urbaine' by Geoffrey Deffrennes (13 March 2009) in Chapter 4 ; Télérama for the extracts 'Les Brouches', 'Police fédérale de Los Angeles' and 'Le voyage de Joachim' (pp. 56, 95, 97, No. 2428, 27 July to 2 August 1996) in Chapter 4; Plantu, for the cartoon 'Le fou' in Chapter 4; Soci été Ouest-France for the extract from the article 'Parlons fran ços' (July 1996) in Chapter 8, and for the recipe 'Tarte aux abricots' (25 July 1996) in Chapter 11; Librairie des Champs-Elysées for extracts from the French translation of Ruth Rendell, To Fear a Painted Devil (La Danse de Salomé, pp. 5, 7-8, Librairie des Champs- Elysées, Paris, 1983) in Chapter 10 (reprinted by permission of the Peters Fraser & Dunlop Group Ltd); TV Magazine for the extracts 'Terreur à bord - film TV americain de Douglas Heyes' and 'L'Etincelle - film de Michel Lang'