Semanticists commonly distinguish the language they study, called object language, from the language they use to express their findings, called metalanguage. When a professor uses Japanese to teach their student how to interpret the language of first-order logic then the language of first-order logic is the object language and Japanese is the metalanguage. The same language may occupy the role of object language and metalanguage at the same time. This is the case in monolingual English dictionaries, in which both the entry term belonging to the object language and the definition text belonging to the metalanguage are taken from the English language.
Semanticists commonly distinguish the language they study called object language from the language they use to express their findings called metalanguage When a professor uses Japanese to teach their student how to interpret the language of first-order logic then the language of first-order logic is the object language and Japanese is the metalanguage The same language may occupy the role of object language and metalanguage at the same time This is the case in monolingual English dictionaries in which both the entry term belonging to the object language and the definition text belonging to the metalanguage are taken from the English language