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Cognitive science is a cover term for a group of disciplines that all have the same goal: describing and explaining human beings’ ability to think (or more particularly, to think about abstract notions like subatomic particles, the possibility of life on other planets or even how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, etc.). One thing that distinguishes us from other animals, even relatively smart ones like chimps and elephants, is our ability to use productive, combinatory syntax. Language plays an important role in how we think about abstract notions, or, at the very least, it appears to be structured in such a way that it allows us to express abstract notions.⁴ The discipline of linguistics is thus one of the important subdisciplines of cognitive science.⁵ Sentences are how we get at expressing abstract thought processes, so the study of syntax is an important foundation stone for understanding how we communicate and interact with each other as humans.