ABSTRACT. Putnam writes that the claim that all natural languages are inconsistent, because they are "semantically closed", is false in part because only theories (systems of assertions) are inconsistent, and natural languages, e.g. English, are not theories. Russell states that in any proposition which contains no real variables, we may imagine one of the terms, not a verb or an adjective, to be replaced by other terms. Biro contends that the speaker's meaning is fundamental, and that his intentions are fundamental in explaining that. According to Raman, the place of a word in grammar as well as its use in language, Wittgenstein avers, is its meaning.