Ways of Looking

Why linguistics?

What no other species has

Discrete Infinity

Building an infinite set of structures from a finite resource

Knowing without learning

Not by instinct or reflexes, but between the gut and the bones

A word missing from human language

Linguistic competence

A first approximation

A learnability space

And universals across languages

Hola, Gallileo

The big picture and one of the two most complex systems known to science

Compositionality

As a property unique to human language, not part of any non-human system

Your last word

Packaging the information

Change and variation

Speech and language do not stand still

Discourse, conversation

And the Faculty of Language and Universal Grammar

Two or three necessities

Without which there could not be either speech or language

Why? Why? Why?

Questions with answers pointing different ways

Continuity

A decline in disorder, more order

Contending perspectives

With respect to speech and language therapy

Some very strongly contending with one another

Moral imperatives

Kindness, gratitude, conscience, honesty, sincerity

Language

Species survival

All rounders

Not one trick ponies