Did you set up your notification settings. If you set it up, you can get an email for each new post, new post in a section, or if your name is mentioned, or if someone 'likes' a comment you made, or a post, etc. etc.
I think there may still be a way to see alerts without using the email, but I haven't seen exactly how since the last changes got made to the profile section. ( I was fonder of the old profile set up. I said 'mail is good enough' and haven't looked much at that section since the change.
