A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish, 5th edition

John Butt, Carmen Benjamin

For many years A NEW REFERENCE GRAMMAR OF MODERN SPANISH has been trusted by students and teachers as the standard English-language reference grammar of Spanish. Now updated to include the latest findings of the Royal Spanish Academy's official grammar book, 'La Nueva gramática de la lengua española', making A NEW REFERENCE GRAMMAR OF MODERN SPANISH FIFTH EDITION even more relevant to students and teachers of Spanish.

Key features of this fifth edition include:

• a 'Guide to the Book', enabling you to make the most of this new edition
• new vocabulary such as topical and technological terms, bringing you up-to-date with contemporary spoken Spanish
• more Latin-American Spanish, ensuring world-wide coverage
• a clearer guidance to recommended usage -advice on the Academy's latest spelling rules.

Whether a student or a teacher of Spanish, you can be sure that this fifth edition of A NEW REFERENCE GRAMMAR OF MODERN SPANISH will provide you with a comprehensive, cohesive and clear guide to the forms and structures of Spanish as it is written and spoken today in Spain and Latin America.

A Workbook is available for use with A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish, 5th edition; Practising Spanish Grammar by Christopher J Pountain and Teresa de Carlos.

Table of Contents:

• Preface to the fifth edition
• Gender of nouns
• Plural of nouns
• Articles
• Adjectives
• Comparison of adjectives and adverbs
• Demonstrative adjectives and pronouns
• Neuter article and neuter pronouns
• Possessive adjectives and pronouns
• Miscellaneous adjectives and pronouns
• Numerals
• Personal pronouns Le/les and lo/la/los/las
• Forms of verbs Use of indicative (non-continuous) verb forms
• Continuous forms of the verb
• The subjunctive
• The imperative
• The infinitive
• Participles
• The gerund
• Modal auxiliary verbs
• Personal a
• Negation
• Interrogation and exclamations
• Conditional sentences
• Pronominal verbs
• Verbs of becoming
• Passive and impersonal sentences
• Ser and estar
• Existential sentences
• Adverbs
• Expressions of time
• Conjunctions and connectors
• Prepositions
• Relative clauses and relative pronouns
• Nominalizers and cleft sentences
• Word order
• Diminutive, augmentative and pejorative suffixes
• Spelling, accent rules, punctuation and word division
• Glossary of grammatical terms
• Bibliography and sources
• Index of English words
• Index of Spanish words and grammatical points

Readership:

Undergraduate students of Spanish. A-level students of Spanish, adult self-learners.

About the Author(s):

John Butt, Emeritus Professor of Modern Hispanic Studies, King's College, London
Carmen Benjamin, Formerly Lecturer in Hispanic Studies, King's College London

Reviews:

"The fifth edition reaffirms A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish as the most practical and comprehensive Spanish grammar book on the market. By illustrating grammar through references to English and other languages, the authors have created a unique resource, giving the English-speaking reader access to a wealth of knowledge about the Spanish language, explained in a clear, cohesive and effective way. This new edition is the first to incorporate the findings of the latest Nueva gramática de la lengua española, published by the Real Academia Española, making it compulsory reading for students at all levels, academics, translators and professionals interested in mastering the intricacies of the Spanish language." (Javier Muñoz-Basols, University of Oxford, UK)

The 5th edition of Butt and Benjamin's New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish manages to improve an already outstanding text. It should be standard issue for all serious students of Spanish. (Ian MacKenzie, Professor of Spanish Linguistics, School of Modern Languages, Newcastle University, UK)