Understanding language as performance clears up the issues. Each individual performs based on prior experience with the words currently being performed. The observer replies with an expectation of a certain reaction based on his prior experience. Added to the reply is the emotional drive of the moment. Keep in mind that the behavior is considered to be the use of words and language only after the behavior has taken place. When performed 'language' is within the entirety of the moment.

Words and language are useful fictions. They are performances sometimes pretending to depict or describe that which is not words and language, so of course they fail when used for that task.

Either a) nothing or b) something. — GigoloJoe

There is the problem, attributing reference to invented words that behave within a model. As is with the word, 'infinity', each assumes acceptability in its usage as reference. Words do not refer, they are behaviors, in this case behaviors acceptable to a model of world (a set of behavior with similar standards of action). These irreconcilable dualities (something - nothing, infinity - limited) show the gap between language and experience. Language (and science, a form of language) is an inventive, creative tool, not any kind of answer.

Jumping in here, considering whether ontology is the way to go, I think meaning is being overthought, or given to much credit. Considering words as behavior, meaning becomes: the use of words that are acceptable to others (including oneself in an internal conversation). and knowing how to respond to words acceptably. Words are learned through emotional commitment to the situation in which the are learned, and continue to be used base on that emotional commitment. For example, a child learns to behave the word ball acceptably because the parent gives bright smiles when he does. So, for those smiles, the child behaves the word ball in an acceptable manner. He has not learned a word, he has learned a behavior driven by the emotional result. I think all words carry that emotional commitment, and are behavior that does not refer, or point, but interacts. Thus the definition of meaning given above.