Plato
The first philosophy of language in the West. Plato’s Cratylus (4th century BC) — from its two positions (is a name natural or conventional?) through the flood of etymologies and the sound of letters to the turn toward the Forms. Read from the Greek.
Reading Plato's Cratylus — Is a Name Natural or Conventional? The West's First Philosophy of Language
Is the name of a thing fixed by nature (physis), or is it just a convention (nomos)? In the fourth century BC, Plato built a whole dialogue on that one question — the first sustained philosophy of language in the West. Socrates and two disputants, read from the Greek.
Physis or Nomos — Two Positions on the 'Correctness' of Names
Hermogenes says: call a thing whatever you like, and that is its right name. Socrates dismantles this — things have a being you cannot set by decree, and 'naming' is likewise an action that can be done well or badly. But this is not yet a win for Cratylus's nature view. The dialogue applies the fifth-century 'nature or custom' debate to language.
A Name Is a 'Tool' — the Shuttle, and the Lawgiver Who Makes Names
As a weaver's shuttle divides the threads, a name is a tool that divides the being of things and teaches it. So who makes the tool — the 'rarest of craftsmen,' the lawgiver. And who uses the finished name and judges it? The dialectician.
The Flood of Etymologies — a Name Carries a Theory (and Is This a Joke?)
In the central section, more than half the dialogue, Socrates takes some 140 names of gods, virtues and natural things and breaks them into etymologies. Almost all of them contain 'flow' and 'motion.' The first name-givers, he suggests, built a Heraclitean worldview of universal flux into the names — and it is never clear whether the long performance is earnest or a joke.
A Name Is 'Vocal Imitation' — ρ for Motion, λ for Smoothness
How does a 'primary name,' one that cannot be broken down further, stand for its object? Socrates's answer is imitation in sound. ρ, because the tongue vibrates, stands for motion; λ, because the tongue slips, for smoothness — the first theory of sound symbolism in the West, and the very opponent Saussure would name and reject 2,300 years later.
No Truth Is Learned from Names — the End of the Cratylus and the Theory of Forms
Having conceded that imitation in sound is not enough to make a name, Socrates brings convention back into the argument. Then he strikes at the heart of the nature view: the first name-giver had no names to work from. So knowledge sits prior to names. The dialogue closes by stepping toward an unchanging 'beautiful itself.'