This paper has two aims. First it wants to draw attention to the works of Roman Ingarden, which contain to-day’s most elaborate phenomenological descriptions in the fields of language and ontology (i.e. concerning the acts and products of linguistic activities, and concerning the formal structures and existential dependencies of beings). Unfortunately many of the more fashionable contemporary writings on these subjects in the phenomenological-existentialist tradition are well below the level of Ingarden’s precision, and the discussions could profit greatly if Ingarden’s works became required reading.