A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish Book

Preface to the Fifth Edition vii

Abbreviations and usage xi

How to use this book xii

1 Gender of nouns 1

2 Plural of nouns 16

3 Articles 27

4 Adjectives 49

5 Comparison of adjectives and ad verbs 71

6 Demonstrative adjectives and pronouns 81

7 Neuter article and neuter pronouns 87

8 Possessive adjectives and pronouns 94

9 Miscellaneous adjectives and pronouns 102

10 Numerals 119

11 Personal pronouns 130

12 Le/les and lo/la/los/las 154

13 Forms of Spanish verbs 166

14 Use of indicative (non-continuous) verb forms 202

15 Continuous forms of the verb 233

16 The subjunctive 241

17 The imperative 283

18 The infinitive 292

19 Participles 304

20 The gerund 309

21 Modal auxiliary verbs 320

22 Personal a 328

23 Negation 336

24 Interrogation and exclamations 347

25 Conditional sentences 354

26 Pronominal verbs 361

27 Verbs of becoming 386

28 Passive and impersonal sentences 391

29 Ser and estar 408

30 Existential sentences 417

31 Adverbs 421

32 Expressions of time 440

33 Conjunctions and discourse markers 453

34 Prepositions 470

35 Relative clauses and relative pronouns 502

36 Nominalizers and cleft sentences 513

37 Word order 520

38 Diminutive, augmentative and pejorative suffixes 531

39 Spelling, accent rules, punctuation and word division 538

Glossary of grammatical terms 553

Glossary of computing and telephone termmology 562

Bibliography and sources 567

Index of English words 569

Index of Spanish words and grammatical points 572