Anybody out there in the ether have any thoughts on Dirk Panhuis’ recent (Eng. tr. 2006) Latin Grammar (U. of Michigan Press)? I’ve been reading some parts of it and can already see some ways in which it might be useful for teaching; its linguistic orientation is especially interesting for someone, like me, who doesn’t have much background in linguistics, textlinguistics, discourse studies, etc. I do think the back cover of the book may oversell it a little bit: “This concise reference…will supplant the outdated grammars of Allen & Greenough and Hale & Buck.” I haven’t used Hale & Buck, but I often use Allen & Greenough and still find it very helpful (not to mention Gildersleeve & Lodge!). It seems clear to me that the traditional grammars need not be binned at present (their authors, after all, appear to have known a great deal about the Latin language), and in any case there are many respects in which they are not “outdated” (or am I wrong about this?); if they were right about something 100+ years ago, they are still right now, regardless of time of composition. From what I’ve read so far, “supplement” would have been a better word than “supplant.”
