On Language-Games

Abstract

In the philosophy of language, a separation has traditionally been made between the semantics, syntax and pragmatics of language. In this respect, Wittgenstein’s thinking went through a quite radical transformation as he moved from the Tractatus into Philosophical Investigations. The “later” Wittgenstein was strongly polemic about the conventional way to understand language as a combination of names. One of his best-known examples was St. Augustine’s story about learning language as a child. St. Augustine seems to state that he learned the meaning of words from the way adults used words by pointing at objects (ostensio) and making sounds in different ways. He learned to understand how individual words were the names of certain objects. Learning a language was thus based on naming.KeywordsPrimary LanguageIndividual WordFamily ResemblancePhilosophical InvestigationForeign CultureThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.