Most words are 'lexical words', i.e．nouns signifying 'things', the
majority of which are abstract concepts rather than physical objects in the
world; only 'proper nouns' have specific and unique referents in the everyday
Line world．The communicative function of a fully-functioning language requires the
(5) scope of reference beyond the particularity of the individual instance．While
each leaf, cloud or smile is different from all others, effective communication
requires general categories or 'universals'．Anyone who has attempted to
communicate with people who do not share their language will be familiar with
the limitations of simply pointing to things, given that the vast majority of
(10) lexical words in a language exist on a high level of abstraction and refer to
classes of things such as 'buildings' or to concepts like 'construction'.
We lose any one-to-one correspondence of word and thing the moment we
group instances into classes．Other than lexical words, language consists of
'function words' or grammatical words, such as 'only' and 'under' which do
(15) not refer to objects in the world at all, and many more kinds of signs other than
nouns．The notion of words as labels for concepts assumes that ideas
exist independently of words and that ideas are established in advance before the
introduction of linguistic structure．Clearly, language is not limited to naming
things existing in the physical world, but includes non-existent objects and ideas
(20) well.
The nomenclaturist stance, in viewing words as labels for pre-existing
ideas and objects, attempts unsuccessfully to reduce language to the purely
referential function of naming things．Things do not exist independently of the
sign systems which we use; 'reality' is created by the media which seem simply
(25) to represent it．Language does not simply name pre-existing categories;
categories do not exist in 'the world' .e.g．'where are the boundaries of a
cloud; when does a smile begin'．Such an emphasis on reality as invariably
perceptually seamless may be an exaggeration; our referential categories do
seem to bear some relationship to certain features which seem to be inherently
(30) salient．Within a language, many words may refer to 'the same thing' but
reflect different evaluations of it．For example, 'one person's 'hovel' is
another person's 'home''
Meanwhile, the signified of a word is subject to historical change．In this
sense, 'reality' or 'the world' is created by the language we use: this
(35) argument insists on the primacy of the signifier．Even if we do not adopt the
radical stance that 'the real world' is a product of our sign systems, we must
still acknowledge the lack of signifiers for many things in the empirical world
and that there is no parallel correlation between most words and objects in the
known world at all．Thus, all words are 'abstractions', and there is no direct
(40) correspondence between words and 'things' in the world.
The author of the passage is primarily concerned with