I found it quite impressive that people are capable of this. For me, I have neither energy, nor ability, nor comprehensive knowledge to do so. So, it is always fascinating (and a bit intimidating) to see people writing these all the time. I want to ask how you guys achieve this feat.
Maybe, is it that I am nonverbal so I cannit write coherently?
I did well in pragmatics. My bane was syntax - that professor did a really poor job even to explain the basics, for example I still don’t know why the hell you’re supposed to spam XP, X’ and X in generative trees even if they won’t branch out anyway.
Here the need part: you dont. Because chomskyite grammar sucks sweaty balls.
Tbf, by my second run through Intro to Pragmatics i got the maxims. But our prof had some really strange interpretations of them.
Well, that explains a lot.
Frankly the way that I handle syntax nowadays is completely heterodox - the tree is just a convenient way to represent some pseudocode-like “rules”, nothing else. My framework is completely proto-scientific and it probably has more holes than a sieve, but it isn’t a big deal since my main area of interest is Historical Linguistics anyway.
On pragmatics: it’s a really amazing field to dig into, but professors with “strange interpretations” are a dime a dozen. Often because they’re too stubborn to ditch their favourite framework even when it doesn’t work for something - for example, trying to explain politeness expressions through the maxims won’t work, and yet some still try to do it.
Tree Diagrams can be useful to structure a sentence, but the UG system of “assume one system fits every language cuz inherent ability” is bad.
If you want to check your understanding of how phrases, clauses and words connect to each other in a certain language, trees can be pretty powerful.
To the latter point: My biggest gripe with linguistics is the tendency to boil everything down to a simple system.
Do you want to elaborate more on how politeness cant be explained by gricean maximes?