A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. Gender of nouns

   • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

   Pages 1-16

3. Plural of nouns

   • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

   Pages 17-28

4. Articles

   • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

   Pages 29-50

5. Adjectives

   • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

   Pages 51-72

6. Comparison of adjectives and adverbs

   • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

   Pages 73-82

7. Demonstrative adjectives and pronouns

   • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

   Pages 83-88

8. Neuter article and pronouns

   • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

   Pages 89-93

9. Possessive adjectives and pronouns

   • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

   Pages 94-100

10. Miscellaneous adjectives and pronouns

    • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

    Pages 101-113

11. Numerals

    • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

    Pages 114-122

12. Personal pronouns

    • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

    Pages 123-142

13. Le/les and lo/la/los/las

    • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

    Pages 143-155

14. Forms of Verbs

    • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

    Pages 156-206

15. Use of indicative (non-continuous) verb forms

    • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

    Pages 207-229

16. Continuous forms of the verb

    • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

    Pages 230-236

17. The subjunctive

    • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

    Pages 237-272

18. The imperative

    • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

    Pages 273-280

19. The infinitive

    • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

    Pages 281-291

20. Participles

    • John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

    Pages 292-297

(abridged and revised) This reference grammar offers intermediate and advanced students a reason­ ably comprehensive guide to the morphology and syntax of educated speech and plain prose in Spain and Latin America at the end of the twentieth century. Spanish is the main, usually the sole official language of twenty-one countries,} and it is set fair to overtake English by the year 2000 in numbers 2 of native speakers. This vast geographical and political diversity ensures that Spanish is a good deal less unified than French, German or even English, the latter more or less internationally standardized according to either American or British norms. Until the 1960s, the criteria of internationally correct Spanish were dictated by the Real Academia Espanola, but the prestige of this institution has now sunk so low that its most solemn decrees are hardly taken seriously - witness the fate of the spelling reforms listed in the Nuevas normas de prosodia y ortograjia, which were supposed to come into force in all Spanish-speaking countries in 1959 and, nearly forty years later, are still selectively ignored by publishers and literate persons everywhere. The fact is that in Spanish 'correctness' is nowadays decided, as it is in all living languages, by the consensus of native speakers; but consensus about linguistic usage is obviously difficult to achieve between more than twenty independent, widely scattered and sometimes mutually hostile countries. Peninsular Spanish is itself in flux.

• English
• Negation
• conditional
• conjunctions
• gerund
• grammar
• infinitive
• nouns
• passive
• personal pronouns
• plural
• pronominal
• pronouns
• spelling
• suffixes

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