While analyzing the language-game, Wittgenstein says that a proposition is the basic unit of a language. To understand the meaning of a proposition, it is not just enough to know the meanings of the constituent words, but we must know their special contributions to the sentence and the context where the sentence is used. Thus understanding a proposition presupposes understanding of other propositions. This indicates that meaning works holistically.

On the account of Wittgenstein, 'primitive-language' and 'language-game' are interchangeable, which he admits in Philosophical Investigations $7: "Sometimes speak of a primitive language as a language-game". Further, he says to imagine a primitive language - language game - means to imagine a form of life" (PI, $19). Here he does not mean that to imagine a language like French means to imagine a form of life in the sense of the French way of life. Rather, he means that it is to imagine a primitive language- language game - like that of the builders. The form of life involved in imagining a primitive language will have to be a form of our life; that is a human form of life.

Thus to understand a sentence we need to know not only its meaning, but also how it differs from other sentences and in which context it is used. This is precisely called 'language-game' by Wittgenstein. . By adapting this process a child learns language. A child learns the meaning of a word by the help of its referent and discriminating it from its non-referents.