Feels Like We Only Go Backwards Now, or How I Learned How to Start Questioning My Intuition and Love Linguistics

How could Linguistics ever have been thought of as something for the Humanities? It has the same aim as physics--to take something you intuitively understood and to complicate it so much you question whether you ever knew it at all. Last week's readings were fine. I never claimed to have an understanding of my body. I'm no biologist. I'm no doctor. But Language? I use it every day. I talk to friends, I write essays, hell, I even think using Language. How could I not understand it? It's not like I didn't know the rules of grammar, how could that not be enough? What more could I learn about my language? That question is yet to be answered, but it turns out there is a lot I can learn about capital-L Language. For starters, I learned a bit about syntax, more than just basic grammar dictated. I learned about how it is decided. I never really thought about why I knew what syntax was correct, but as Chapter 1 Section 9 predicted, I have no clue why "Who do you wonder what bought?" sounds like an alien language. It's not just the grammar rules. It seems to be something more. That's just not how you would begin to generate a sentence. Parts of speech was up next, and this was something I had at least thought about before. Of course, I know what part of speech a word is. What could there be to learn? But as always, my question isn't answered with an answer, but with a question: why do I know Language as well as I do? And whether it is Syntax, Parts of Speech, or Constituency, my previous answer of school and intuition prove to not be enough. But there is hope! Much like physics doesn't just leave you hanging, Linguistics does provide some answers to. The night is always darkest before the dawn, and sometimes you have to move backwards to go forwards. At least now when people ask me what noun my adjective applies to, I can draw them a nice tree structure.