The Logical Study of Language

This chapter discusses the foundations of philosophical semantics, covering the work of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. Frege, along with Russell, did more than anyone else to create the subject. The development of symbolic logic, the analysis of quantification, the application of logical ideas and techniques to the semantics of natural language, the distinction between sense and reference, the linking of representational content to truth conditions, and the compositional calculation of the contents of compound expressions from the semantic properties of their parts are all due to Frege and Russell. Philosophy of language, as we know it today, would not exist without them.