Modern Italian Grammar: A Practical Guide (Routledge Modern Grammars)

Rating:
Summary: okay but not that useful
Review: If you already know a reasonable amount of Italian and you read through this book, you will pick up some worthwhile information about word usage etc. The problem I had with it, and the reason I only give it three stars, is that I found it difficult to impossible to use as a reference. Suppose you remember that there was something about a particular usage..well, to find it again, you will have to remember what functional section it was in (was it in talking about other people? or in describing your likes and dislikes? and so forth.) And you can't really look anything up if you don't already know it's in there. So if you are puzzled by the grammar of a sentence you read in the newspaper, it will be very difficult to look anything helpful up in this book. And you can't just look up, say, uses of the subjunctive. So I don't recommend it too highly. A better and more useful book in my opinion is the Cassell's reference grammar (not the little Cassell's but a larger book) which covers much of the same ground.

Rating:
Summary: A must-have for serious students of Italian
Review: This text combines a traditional structural grammar section with the bulk of the book then divided into chapters on communicative functions. Comprehensive and clearly written. This book and Martin Maiden's A Reference Grammar of Modern Italian (which complements Proudfoot's book) should be in the library of any serious student of Italian.