Why Formal Linguistics for the Teaching of Latin?

A brief overview of the main syntactic structures of Latin shows that it is possible to express in a unified way the partial similarity and the partial differences characterizing simple sentences in Latin, English and Italian, because these languages, and probably all languages, make use of the same universal principles of phrase structure, even if some parameters are set differently in each language. In general, we suggest that the concepts of “phrase” and “remerge” (namely, syntactic movement) are highly useful tools of contemporary formal linguistics: they are intuitive to native speakers of every language, they are appropriate for a scientifically advanced theoretical model, and they can be easily applied to language pedagogy. Our main point has been that there are compelling reasons to formulate a new methodology of language teaching that emphasizes linguistic awareness more than traditional approaches. This methodology newly conceptualizes grammar as a science of the mind that both contributes to the students’ overall education and facilitates learning modern and classical languages.