This work develops a regulatory ontology of language that departs from both representational and usage-based paradigms. Rather than treating language as a system of meanings, symbols, or socially enforced rules, the text analyzes language as a historically stabilized mechanism of behavioral regulation operating under conditions of uncertainty. The central claim is that language does not originate from symbolic representation or propositional communication, but from pre-symbolic processes of imitation, synchronization, and the stabilization of coordinated action. Semantic structures, grammatical rules, dictionaries, and alphabets are treated as late-stage externalizations of prior regulatory distinctions, rather than as foundational components of language. The framework is articulated through a set of ontological commitments and their necessary consequences, which collectively delineate principled limits of translation, information-theoretic models of communication, and purely text-based approaches to language learning. Particular attention is given to cases where dominant theoretical assumptions fail, including cross-dictionary translation, alphabet mismatch, cryptographic encoding across incompatible systems, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and contemporary large language models (LLMs). The work does not aim to propose a comprehensive linguistic theory or to compete with existing models within their domains of applicability. Instead, it seeks to expose the ontological boundaries within which such models remain meaningful. Language, on this account, is observable only through the externalized residue of historically viable regulation; beyond this residue lie not semantic gaps or informational noise, but the limits of regulation itself. This text is intended as a foundational contribution for further philosophical, cognitive, and interdisciplinary research, and as a reference point for examining the limits of translation, information, and artificial language competence.