By integrating ideas of Peirce, Bühler, Bakhtin, Piaget and Jakobson, in this book the author defines three linguistic supertypes each operating with either the situation in reality, the speaker's experience of it or his condensed information to the hearer. The theory is built step by step on the basis of a detailed examination of individual languages and their relationship to perception and cognition, their representation of situations and their use in oral and written discourse. The theory offers a completely new understanding of language and its role in perception, cognition and communication.