Learning our language is something people start to do without prior instruction, usually around the age of one. A baby is overwhelmed with the desire to communicate with its parents and understand everything around it. Similar to a parrot, parents teach their young through repetition, often starting with the words mom and dad, or perhaps mama and dada. This practice has led many to believe that the human species learns its language by acting as a type of sponge that absorbs all words it encounters. This belief, however, leaves many questions with few answers, forcing the need to create a new theory. It is now becoming apparent that humans learn language not only by memorizing words, but by applying grammatical rules through complex calculations in their brain.

Before examining these rules or calculations, the first thought pondered should be what...