Although efforts have been under way for the past two centuries to treat language scientifically, current linguistic theory lacks an adequate scientific foundation and difficulties are caused by long-standing confusions between the logical domain of signs and grammar and the physical domain of sound waves and the people who speak and understand. This book pushes aside the ancient semiotic-grammatical foundations of linguistics and moves it completely into the physical domain where theories and hypotheses can be tested against observations of the physical reality. Here new foundations are laid that are fully consonant with modern science as practiced in physics, chemistry and biology. On these foundations the author builds a structure of testable specific dynamic causal laws of communicative behavior that provides support for treating previously recalcitrant context-dependent semantic, pragmatic, interactive, rhetorical, and literary phenomena. The central role of context in the foundations of the theory provides the insights of scientific lawfulness while still honoring the uniqueness of the individual and the particularity of situations celebrated in the humanities.