Language Games, A Foundation for Semantics and Ontology

The issues raised by Wittgenstein’s language games are fundamental to any theory of semantics, formal or informal. Montague’s view of natural language as a version of formal logic is at best an approximation to a single language game or a family of closely related games. But it is not unusual for a short phrase or sentence to introduce, comment on, or combine aspects of multiple language games. The option of dynamically switching from one game to another enables natural languages to adapt to any possible subject from any perspective for any humanly conceivable purpose. But the option of staying within one precisely defined game enables natural languages to attain the kind of precision that is achieved in a mathematical formalism. To support the flexibility of natural languages and the precision of formal languages within a common framework, this article drops the assumption of a fixed logic. Instead, it proposes a dynamic framework of logics and ontologies that can accommodate the shifting points of view and methods of argumentation and negotiation that are common during discourse. Such a system is necessary to characterize the open-ended variety of language use in different applications at different stages of life — everything from an infant learning a first language to the most sophisticated adult language in science and engineering.