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Linguistics is the study of the human language faculty. It requires the investigation of a highly structured system of knowledge within the mind of the speaker (a mental grammar), which is examined empirically and modeled formally. Linguists seek to establish the general principles governing the organization, emergence and use of language, including a model of how languages vary across space and time. Language is treated as a natural object, like other cognitive faculties, serving as a natural point of entry into scientific discovery and the tools of scientific reasoning, such as pattern recognition, experimental design, and hypothesis construction and testing. Linguistics serves as a “bridge” discipline between the sciences and the humanities because language is at the center of humanistic inquiry, from philosophy and history to literary theory and language and cultural studies.