ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a sample of the criticisms of philosophers on the course of linguistic philosophy. In seeking ontological conclusions from linguistic premisses, the starting-point must be the grammar of some actual language, whether living or dead. From the standpoint of a language's capacity to express what is or what might be the case, it contains much that is superfluous, in grammar as well as in vocabulary. Grammatical propriety requires a German child to be indicated by a neuter expression, a liability from which French children are exempt. The chief difficulty arose from the need to count non-linguistic contextual features of statements as significant. So long as one confine to analysis of conventional verbal statements, in isolation from their settings, traditional grammar provides with means of segmentation and classification that can subsequently be elaborated and refined in the service of philosophical insight. For language, though it represents reality, is also a part of reality.
