French Grammars

Abstract

This article focuses on the 20th and 21st centuries, which have seen a growing number of grammars devoted to the French language. Some aim at a scholastic audience, while others aim at a wider public. Some are prescriptive, usually based on literary texts; others are descriptive, incorporating spoken and informal uses; and still others are theoretically oriented, using French as an illustration of the theory advocated. Some are mostly devoted to morphology and syntax while others integrate semantics and discourse. Some include comparisons between French and other languages. Most French grammars started with a terminology inherited from Latin grammars, and both the list of terms and the analyses have evolved thanks to the development of linguistic theories and also to consider colloquial uses and spoken French. Particular points of interest are descriptions of determination (with the category “determiner” appearing only after 1960), negation, the pronominal system, and relative clauses.