Swedish by Hinchliffe, Ian; Holmes, Philip; Malmgård, Sofia;

Short description:

Swedish: A Comprehensive Grammar is an award-winning complete reference guide to modern Swedish grammar. This volume is organised to promote a thorough understanding of Swedish grammar, presenting the complexities of the language in a concise and readable form. 

Long description:

Swedish: A Comprehensive Grammar is an award-winning complete reference guide to modern Swedish grammar. This volume is organised to promote a thorough understanding of Swedish grammar, presenting the complexities of the language in a concise and readable form. Explanations are full, clear and free of jargon, and an extensive index, numbered paragraphs, cross-references and summary charts provide readers with easy access to the information they require.

This fourth edition has been exhaustively researched and updated to align with current standards in the description of language and to incorporate the most recent recommendations of Språkrådet, the Language Council of Sweden. The emphasis is on Swedish in everyday communication, drawing on contemporary corpus material and a wide range of printed and online sources to illustrate the use of high-frequency words and expressions. Examples have been systematically updated to reflect contemporary conventions and usage, and new content has been added to reflect the increasing democratisation of written Swedish.

Key features include:

• detailed treatment of grammatical structures and parts of speech
• a wealth of authentic examples, many drawn from mainstream news media and reliable online sources
• careful attention to areas that typically cause confusion or difficulty for learners
• Swedish/English contrasts highlighted throughout the book
• a new chapter outlining major differences in written and spoken Swedish, with notes on slang and youth argot.

Swedish: A Comprehensive Grammar is the most thorough and detailed Swedish grammar available in English and is an essential reference source for students and speakers of Swedish, irrespective of level.

Winner of the Swedish National Language Council’s Erik Wellander Prize, 2003

Praise for the first edition

'This grammar has great assets. The first is that it is compiled by English-speaking people who have an excellent command of Swedish but who know at first hand where the difficulties of learning Swedish lie ... The second is that it represents contemporary Swedish and draws attention to different styles and registers ... a good reliable guide to modern Swedish and should serve as a standard reference of many years.' 

- Scandinavica

'The strong points of this grammar are: (a) it concentrates on everyday informal language; (b) it gives a wealth of examples; (c) by being "unashamedly comparative" it highlights some aspects of the Swedish language that are hardly ever touched upon in Swedish grammars written by native speakers.'

- Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek

Praise for the second edition

'A vital contribution to the presentation of Swedish to an international audience. The book adopts a valuable external perspective on Swedish, from which native speakers of Swedish can also benefit, and is a major source of knowledge for all of those either within or outside Sweden who teach Swedish as a second language or as a foreign language.' 

-The Swedish Language Council

‘We have in Swedish: A Comprehensive Grammar an extraordinarily workable teaching and reference tool that should continue to be a source of linguistic enrichment for many years to come.’ 

- Marilyn Johns Blackwell, Ohio State University, USA

'(T)his is a reference work of the first rank ... Above all, however, this book constitutes the most important international work of reference for everyone with an interest in linguistics in search of detailed information about the morphology and syntax of Swedish.'

- Skandinavistik

Praise for the third edition

'A thorough, clear guide to the rules of Swedish grammar… Holmes and Hinchliffe cover everything from basics such as nouns and adjectives to more advanced topics such as interjections and prepositions, and they do it all with ease and clarity. Javisst, this is the best reference book to Swedish grammar you’ll find in English.'

- B.J. Epstein, University of East Anglia, UK

Table of Contents:

Preface          

Symbols and abbreviations used in the text          

Chapter 1 Nouns      

1.1      Introduction  

1.2      Gender rules  

1.3      Miscellaneous points of gender         

1.4      Plural noun forms – the declensions 

1.5      Miscellaneous points on indefinite plural forms      

1.6      Special uses of the singular and plural         

1.7      Noun homonyms       

1.8      The genitive   

1.9      The form of the indefinite article      

1.10    The form of the definite (end) article

1.11    The use of the indefinite and definite (end) article   

Chapter 2 Adjectives           

2.1      Form and order         

2.2      The indefinite declension      

2.3      The definite declension         

2.4      Adjectival nouns       

2.5      Comparison of adjectives      

Chapter 3 Pronouns

3.1      Personal pronouns     

3.2      Function and reference of personal pronouns

3.3      Subject and object pronouns 

3.4      Reflexive pronouns   

3.5      Emphatic pronouns   

3.6      Possessive adjectives and pronouns  

3.7      Demonstrative pronouns       

3.8      Determinative pronouns       

3.9      Indefinite pronouns   

3.10    Interrogative pronouns         

3.11    Relative pronouns

Chapter 4 Numerals

4.1      Forms of numerals    

4.2      The use of cardinal numbers 

4.3      The use of ordinal numbers  

4.4      Fractions       

4.5      Dates  

4.6      Telling the time

Chapter 5 Verbs       

5.1      Form  

5.2      The use of the tenses 

5.3      Ways of expressing mood     

5.4      Transitive, intransitive and reflexive verbs   

5.5      −s forms of the verb and the passive 

5.6      Compound verbs       

5.7      Some translation hints

Chapter 6 Adverbs  

6.1      Form  

6.2      Meaning and function

6.3      Location and movement       

6.4      Translating adverbs   

Chapter 7 Prepositions        

7.1      Introduction  

7.2      The fifteen most common Swedish prepositions      

7.3      Prepositional usage   

Chapter 8 Conjunctions      

8.1      Coordination and subordination       

8.2      Coordinating conjunctions    

8.3      Subordinating conjunctions  

8.4      Other subordinators  

8.5      Some translation hints

Chapter 9 Interjections       

9.1      Introduction  

9.2      Affirmations and denials       

9.3      Reactions in conversation     

9.4      Commands    

9.5      Imitations      

9.6      Polite expressions     

9.7      Expletives     

Chapter 10 Sentence structure and word order   

10.1    Clause elements         

10.2    Phrases          

10.3    Main clause word order – basic positions    

10.4    Subordinate clause word order – basic positions     

10.5    Order within positions          

10.6    Main clause transformations 

10.7    Subordinate clauses   

10.8    Emphasis      

10.9    Ellipsis          

10.10  Swedish word order summarised      

Chapter 11 Word formation          

11.1    Introduction  

11.2    Affixation      

11.3    Compounding

11.4    Expressive formation

11.5    Abbreviation 

11.6    Foreign influences on Swedish         

11.7    Conversion    

Chapter 12 Orthography    

12.1    Symbols and sounds  

12.2    Spelling         

12.3    Upper-case and lower-case letters    

12.4    Miscellaneous

Chapter 13 Punctuation      

13.1    Introduction –Punctuation marks     

13.2    Addresses      

13.3    Dates  

Chapter 14 Written and spoken Swedish  

14.1    Word choices in written and spoken Swedish          

14.2    Swedish slang

14.3    Youth argot - förortssvenska