认知科学最终将研究人类思维的各个方面：认知与推理，习得与学习，感知，情感，互动等等。在如此广阔的范围内，认知科学将来自人类学，计算机科学，人工智能，语言学，哲学，心理学，（神经）生物学和神经科学等众多独立建立学科的假设，概念和方法结合在一起。在过去的几十年中，越来越明显的是，只有考虑到人类的认知能力和处理能力，才能完全理解语言。我们使用语言所做的一切最终都会在某个时间点通过大脑，例如，当我们获得第一语言，学习第二语言，从长期记忆中获得新的指称对象或从工作记忆中获得给定的指称对象时，无意识地决定使用一种句法
Cognitive Science is a field that, ultimately, studies all aspects of the human mind: cognition and reasoning, acquisition and learning, perception, emotion, interaction, and more. Given this vast scope, Cognitive Science brings together assumptions, concepts, and methods from a large number of independently established disciplines, including anthropology, computer science, artificial intelligence, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, (neuro)biology, and neuroscience. Over the past decades, it has become more and more obvious that language can only be fully understood by taking into account humans' cognitive skills and processing. Everything we do with language ultimately passes through the mind at some point of time, as when we acquire our first language, learn a second language, access new referents from long-term memory or given referents from working memory, decide unconsciously to use one syntactic structure over another, or experience language impairments as a result of brain lesions or strokes. For all these and many other linguistic phenomena, an understanding of cognitive processes is often indispensable. The study of Cognitive Science offers exciting opportunities to deepen our understanding of language within the broader question of what it is that makes us human.