A Short Course in Reading French

by Brickman, Celia

• ISBN13: 9780231156776
• ISBN10: 0231156774
• Edition: Bilingual
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-12-04
• Publisher: Ingram Pub Services

Summary

Designed to help readers develop efficient skills for translating French in a short amount of time, this textbook teaches the basics of French grammar, reinforcing its lessons with exercises and key practice translations. A systematic guide, this book is a critical companion for university-level students learning to read and translate written French into English; for graduate scholars learning to do research in French or prepping for proficiency exams; and for any interested readers who want to improve their facility with the French language. In addition, A Short Course in Reading French exposes readers to a broad range of French texts from the humanities and social sciences, including writings by distinguished francophone authors from around the world. The book begins with French pronunciation and cognates and moves through nouns, articles, and prepositions; verbs, adjectives, and adverbs; a graduated presentation of all the indicative and subjunctive tenses; object, relative, and other pronouns; the passive voice; common idiomatic constructions; and other fundamental building blocks of the French language. Chapters contain translation passages from such authors as Pascal, Montesquieu, Proust, Sartre, Bourdieu, Senghor, Césaire, de Certeau, de Beauvoir, Barthes, and Kristeva. Drawn from more than two decades of experience teaching French to students from academic and nonacademic backgrounds, Celia Brickman's clear, accessible, and time-tested format enables even beginners to develop a sophisticated grasp of the language and become adept readers of French.

Author Biography

A native of Montreal, Celia Brickman earned her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago and is the director of the Hyde Park Language Program, where she has been teaching French to graduate students and others for more than twenty years.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xv
Introduction	p. xvii
Guide to pronunciation	p. xx
Cognates	p. xxvi
Nouns, Articles, and Prepositions, and the Principle of Agreement	p. 1
Nouns, Gender, and the Principle of Agreement	p. 1
Articles	p. 1
Gendered Nouns	p. 5
The Plural of Nouns	p. 7
Prepositions	p. 9
Contraction of Prepositions with Definite Articles	p. 10
The Partitive and Negative Uses of DE	p. 10
The Multiple Meanings of DES	p. 11
Verbs, Subject Pronouns, and the Present Tense/Présent De L'lndicatif	p. 13
Infinitives and Verb Families	p. 13
Subject Pronouns	p. 13
The Present Tense/Present de l'Indicatif of -ER Verbs	p. 15
Translation of the Present Tense/Présent de I'lndicatif	p. 16
The Negative Form of the Present Tense	p. 16
Two Important Irregular Verbs: AVOIR, to Have, and ÊTRE, to Be	p. 17
A Third Irregular Verb: ALLER, to Go	p. 18
Formation of Simple Questions	p. 19
Present Tense/Présent de l'Indicatif of -RE and -IR Verbs	p. 20
Another Important Irregular Verb: FAIRE, to Do, to Make	p. 24
The Historic Present in French	p. 24
Adjectives and Adverbs	p. 26
Adjectives	p. 26
Adverbs	p. 38
Comparative and Superlative Forms of Adjectives and Adverbs	p. 40
Translation Passage: Le Corbeau et le Renard	p. 43
Reflexive Verbs	p. 44
Reflexive Pronouns and the Formation of Reflexive Verbs	p. 44
The Negative Form of Reflexive Verbs	p. 45
Various Ways in Which to Translate Reflexive Verbs	p. 45
The Imperfect/L'imparfait	p. 49
Explanation of the Tense	p. 49
Formation of the Imparfait	p. 49
Translations of the Imparfait	p. 51
AVOIR and ÊTRE in the Imparfait	p. 52
The Negative Form of the Imparfait	p. 53
Reflexive Verbs in the Imparfait	p. 53
Translation Passage: La Charte de Médecins Sans Frontières	p. 54
Past Partlciples/Les Participes Passés	p. 56
Formation of Past Participles	p. 56
Past Participles as Adjectives	p. 57
Past Participles as Predicate Adjectives	p. 58
Le Passé Composé/The Compound Past	p. 60
Explanation of the Tense	p. 60
Rules Governing the Formation and Translation of the Passé Composé	p. 60
The Passé Composé in the Negative Form	p. 65
AVOIR and ÊTRE in the Passé Composé	p. 65
The Passé Composé Used Together with the Imparfait	p. 66
The Passé Composé with Adverbs	p. 67
Past Participles Used As Predicate Adjectives in the Present Tense Compared with Past Participles Used in the Possé Composé to Form the Past Tense	p. 68
Translation Passage: Le Petit Chaperon rouge	p. 69
Directjand Indirect Object Pronouns	p. 71
Recognizing Objects in Transitive Sentences	p. 71
Direct Object Pronouns: Meaning and Placement	p. 71
LE, LA, and LES As Direct Object Pronouns	p. 73
Direct Object Pronouns in the Passé Composé: Placement and Agreement	p. 73
Indirect Object Pronouns: Meaning and Placement	p. 74
The Partitive Pronoun EN	p. 76
The Pronoun Y	p. 77
The Order of Object Pronouns When There Are More Than One of Them	p. 77
Translation Passage: La Belle au bois dormant	p. 79
Additional Forms of the Negative	p. 81
General Pattern	p. 81
Irregularities in Various Forms of the Negative	p. 82
Translation Passage: Déclaration des droits de lÆhomme et du citoyen de 1789	p. 86
More Irregular Yet Common Verbs	p. 87
Venir (to come) and Tenir (to hold)	p. 87
-OIR Verbs	p. 88
Impersonal Pronouns, Demonstrative Pronouns, Impersonal Verbs, and an Introduction to the Word Que	p. 91
Demonstrative Pronoun CE	p. 91
Demonstrative Pronouns CECI and CELA	p. 91
Demonstrative Pronoun CELUI	p. 92
The Impersonal Pronoun IL	p. 93
Impersonal Verbs	p. 94
The Various Uses of QUE	p. 96
Translation Passage: Senghor, Négritude et humanisme	p. 98
The Future and Conditional Tenses/Le Futur Simple Et Le Conditionnel	p. 99
The Future and Conditional Stem	p. 99
The Future Tense/Le Futar Simple: Endings	p. 100
The Near Future/Le Futur Proche	p. 101
The Conditional Tense/Le Conditionnel	p. 101
Translation Passage: Aimé Césaire, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal	p. 106
Present Participles and Imperatives	p. 107
Present Participles	p. 107
Imperatives	p. 109
Negative Imperatives	p. 110
Imperatives with Disjunctive Pronouns and Object Pronouns; and Reflexive Imperatives	p. 110
Translation Passage: Louis Riel Journaux de guerre et de prison	p. 114
The Passive Voice	p. 115
The Passive Voice Formed by the Past Participle as a Predicate Adjective	p. 115
Use of Reflexive Verbs to Form the Passive Voice	p. 116
The Translation of the Subject Pronoun ON and Its Use to Form the Passive Voice	p. 116
Translation Passage: Marcel Mauss, Essai sur le don	p. 118
Le Passé Simple/The Simple Past, or the Past Historic	p. 120
The Possé Simple of -ER Verbs	p. 120
The Passé Simple of-RE and -IR Verbs	p. 121
Translation Passage: Louis Hémon, Maria Chapdelaine	p. 125
Relative and Interrogative Pronouns and Adjectives	p. 126
Relative Pronouns QUI and QUE	p. 126
Uses of the Adjective QUEL	p. 130
The Relative and Prepositional Pronoun LEQUEL; the Prepositional Pronoun QUI	p. 131
The Relative Pronoun DONT	p. 132
The Interrogative Pronouns LEQUEL, QUI, and QUE	p. 134
Questions Formed with Both Interrogative and Relative Pronouns QUI and QUE	p. 135
Translation Exercise: Michel de Certeau, L'Invention da quotidien	p. 136
More Compound Tenses	p. 158
Le Plus-que-patfait/The Pluperfect	p. 138
LeFutur Antérieur/The Future Perfect	p. 140
Le Conditionnel Passé/The Conditional Perfect	p. 141
Le Passé Antérieur	p. 142
Translation Passage: Montesquieu, Essai sur le goût	p. 145
The Causative Faire	p. 147
The Causative FAIRE, an Idiomatic Construction	p. 147
Translation Passage: Durkheim, Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse	p. 150
Translation Passage: Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques	p. 151
Le Subjonctif/The Subjunctive	p. 153
When Is the Subjunctive Used in French?	p. 154
The Four Tenses of the Subjunctive	p. 157
Translation Passage: Molière, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme	p. 162
Translation Passage: Pascal, Pensées	p. 164
Modal Verbs and Other Common Idiomatic Verbal Constructions	p. 165
Modal Verbs	p. 165
Other Idiomatic Verbal Constructions	p. 168
Translation Passage: de Tocqueville, De la Démocratic en Amérique	p. 171
Translation Passage: Roland Barthes, Le Plaisir du texte	p. 172
Changes of Tense with Idioms of Time	p. 174
DEPUIS	p. 174
Ilya… Que, Ça Fait… Que, Voilà…Que	p. 174
Translation Passage: René Descartes, Méditations métaphysiques	p. 176
Translation Passage: Marcel Proust, Du Côté de chez Swann	p. 177
Common Idiomatic Expressions	p. 178
TOUT- Grammatical Functions and Meanings	p. 178
Idioms with TOUT	p. 179
Aussi; Aussibienque	p. 181
Combinative Conjunctions ET…ET;OU… OU;SOIT… SOIT;NI…NI	p. 181
Idioms with METTRE/MIS	p. 182
The Several Meanings of MÊME	p. 182
The Several Meanings of SI	p. 183
The Several Meanings of ENCORE	p. 184
Translation Passage: Pierre Bourdieu, Pour une Anthropologie réflexive	p. 185
Translation Passage: Simone Weil, Les Besoins de lÆâme	p. 185
Configurations of the Infinitive	p. 187
Verbs Followed by the Infinitive	p. 187
The Infinitive After Prepositions	p. 188
The Infinitive After the Preposition APRÈS	p. 188
The Infinitive After Adjectives	p. 188
The Infinitive After Nouns	p. 189
Translation Passage: Mbembe, “ Notes provisoires sur la postcolonie ”	p. 190
Some Verb Families	p. 192
-OIR Verbs	p. 193
Families of Verbs Whose Members Are All Conjugated in the Same Way	p. 195
Further Translation Passages	p. 200
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables	p. 200
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary	p. 202
Gabrielle Roy, Bonheur d'occasion	p. 203
Jean-Paul Sartre, L'Existentialisme est un humanisme	p. 204
Simone de Beauvoir, Le Deuxième Sexe	p. 205
Albert Camus, Le Mythe de Sisyphe	p. 205
Paul Ric¿ur, Le Conflit des interprétations	p. 206
Édouard Glissant, Philosophie de la relation	p. 207
Roger-Pol Droit, Michel Foucault: Entretiens	p. 208
Julia Kristeva, Pouvoirs de I'horreur	p. 209
Nicolas Bourriaud, Radicant: Pour une esthétique de la globalisation	p. 210
Michel Tremblay, Le Cahier bleu	p. 211
Patrick Chamoiseau, Texaco	p. 212
Abdourahman A. Waberi, Passage des larmes	p. 213
Appendix	p. 215
Pronoun Chart	p. 215
(Indicative) Verb Tense Chart I	p. 216
(Indicative) Irregular Verb Tense Chart I	p. 219
(Indicative) Verb Tense Chart II	p. 222
(Indicative) Irregular Verb Tense Chart II	p. 225
Index	p. 229
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