Plato's dialogue Cratylus begins with a debate. Socrates is asked whether the sounds of words are simply arbitrary conventions, as Hermogenes suggests, or if sounds are reflective in some way of their ...

A comprehensive case for supplementing the cherished principle of arbitrariness with other types of associations between form and meaning has been proposed by authors of a new report. "It's not that ...

Words in the English language are structured to help children learn, according to research. Words like "woof" accurately represent the sound of a dog while sounds with similar meanings may have a ...

We know that words change all the time and over time, a process language experts describe as “semantic shift,” semantics being the field of language concerned with meaning. Even if we may not ...

Oftentimes definitions can limit you, imposing unnecessary constraints, enclosing things within the four corners of a narrow, arbitrary boundary that you set fo ...

The death of Joan Didion, the most profound essayist about language since George Orwell, comes at a time when one of her most astute observations — that words have meaning and consequences — is being ...

This news release is available in German. "It's not that arbitrariness was a bad idea. It is an important principle, but it doesn't fully explain how words work," says Mark Dingemanse, language ...