Linguistic Theory and the teaching of Latin

In this chapter, I discuss the contribution that formal linguistic theory can provide to language teaching in general and the teaching of Latin in particular. Explicit teaching can be particularly helpful when learning a language which does no longer have native speakers. In this case, it is crucial to rely on good descriptions of the language, based on a solid and coherent linguistic theory, to replace traditional grammars used at school and at the university, which are unfortunately often incomplete, hardly systematic, not based on a coherent linguistic theory and which often contain unprecise formulations and terminology. Based on a new approach to language and language acquisition, linguistic theory can provide new descriptive tools and a new comparative approach to language teaching.