The fallacy, in its crudest... «Linguistics: A Very Short Introduction »

The fallacy, in its crudest form, is that words are names for pre–existing categories. The following is a quotation from the Authorized Version of the Book of Genesis, in which Adam, who is still the only human being in the Garden of Eden, assigns names to other species with which he shares it.

And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

Genesis 2.19

This is one passage that for many centuries lay at the centre of linguistic thought in Christian Europe. Another was the story later in the same book of the Tower of Babel. The naming by Adam explained the origin of language, as a way of labelling things around us. The second story explained why, as we know it, ‘the whole earth’ is not still ‘of one language, and of one speech’. For, to curb mankind, God had to ‘confound’ it (11.1–9).

Now this ‘confusion’, whatever its origin, is certainly with us.