人类语言是一种极为复杂和高度结构化的通信系统。所有人类语言都具有惊人的属性，可以在其声音系统和语法中观察到它们。例如，在语言随时间变化的方式以及孩子学习母语的步骤中也可以找到规律性。这些有关语言的事实需要进行科学分析，并可以根据用来产生和听取语音的人体器官以及特定的认知能力和人类思维的局限性来解释。<br> <br>语言学旨在对人类语言的这些特性提供客观而系统的研究。尽管语言学由于其主题而从根本上说是一门人文学科，但它的目标和方法是科学的，并且与社会科学（包括心理学，人类学和社会学）有很多共同点。作为一门
A human language is an enormously intricate and highly structured communication system. All human languages share a striking number of properties that can be observed in their sound systems and grammars. Regularities can also be found, for example, in the ways languages change over time and in the steps by which children learn their native language. These facts about language call for scientific analysis and can be explained in terms of the human organs used to produce and listen to speech as well as with respect to specific cognitive abilities and limitations of the human mind.<br><br>The goal of linguistics is to provide an objective and systematic study of these properties in human languages. Though linguistics is fundamentally a humanistic discipline because of its subject matter, it is scientific in its goals and methods and has much in common with social sciences, including psychology, anthropology and sociology. Linguistics as a discipline also has close ties to philosophy (logic and the philosophy of language), computer science (the processing of human languages by computer), communication and the study of individual foreign languages.