Thus, at the most basic level for the formation of a "word" in human language, there must be a combination of the L component with the E component. When we know a "word" in a language, we must know both components: the concept that it relates to as well as its grammatical category and inflection. The former is the L component; the latter is the E component. The Integration Hypothesis suggests that it was the grammatical operator Merge that triggered this combination, occurring when one linguistic object (L layer) satisfies the grammatical feature of another linguistic object (E layer). This means that L components are not expected to directly combine with each other.