Linguistics refers to the systematic study of human language: oral, written, and signed. It is an interdisciplinary scientific field whose aim is to construct a unified theory of human language by identifying the overt and covert mechanisms that make language an attribute unique to humans. Linguistics observes and describes human language aiming to find generalizable rules and representations of underlying structure, in order to draw conclusions about its general nature, and its development in individuals and in humankind.

The complexity involved in language as a genetic, cognitive, social, and cultural endowment in a single individual is amplified by the variability [Page 1109]found in the languages of the world (over 7,000 living languages) across different groups of individuals, populations, and ages, on national scales, as well as ...