According to Frege, the meaning of a sentence is determined in isolation from other sentences. This conception of meaning expresses that each sentence has a specific sense and it is about the state of affairs of the world. The sentence will be meaningful if the state of affairs is found in the phenomenal world. So there is a tight-knit association found between the meaning of a sentence and its referred state of affairs. This explains that every proposition is either true or false. The proposition will be treated as true if the state of affairs maps the empirical world, and it will be treated as false if the state of affairs does not map the empirical world. Hence, truth-value of a proposition is determined by its referred state of affairs. The important idea of this conception of meaning is that the truth-value of a proposition determines the meaning of a proposition. Logically speaking, if a proposition does not have truth-value it will be regarded as a meaningless or insignificant proposition.

Early Wittgenstein's approach to meaning subscribes to the similar view of Frege, but his claims are based on two guiding principles, namely, picture theory of meaning and elementary proposition. In his view, every sentence depicts a picture. The picture is about the state of affairs of the world. The sentence will be judged as true if the picture maps the state of affairs of the world, and it turns out to be false if the picture does not map the state of affairs of the world. Hence, truth-value of a sentence is determined by its picture, i.e. what the sentence states about. 'Picture' of a sentence may be considered same as 'sense' of a sentence, or 'essence' of a sentence.

According to him, all sentences can be reduced to atomic sentences which are also called elementary sentences. Atomic sentences are those which state about the facts of the world. By the help of correspondence method, atomic sentences are judged as either true or false. Thus, truth or falsity of an atomic sentence is decided on the availability of its corresponding state of affairs in the world.