ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s contributions to the study of language in two main areas: his historical and philosophical enquiries into natural languages and his schemes for an artificial, philosophical language that would remedy the defects of natural languages. Leibniz’s scheme for an artificial philosophical language suggests that he regarded the natural languages with disfavour. One problem that Leibniz faces concerns the discovery of primitive concepts on which the project depends. The issue of the nature of the symbolism might seem to be settled by a passage where Leibniz says that artificial languages like those of John Wilkins and George Dalgarno are ‘wholly chosen and completely arbitrary’. The idea of a universal subject–predicate grammar is one that has far-reaching significance beyond the philosophy of language and mind. The New Essays on Human Understanding, in particular, testifies to Leibniz’s concern with both historical and philosophical enquiries into language that he does not clearly distinguish.
