In the lexicon of a language, lexical words or nouns refer to things. These words fall into three main classes: A lexicon is a list of words together with additional word-specific information, i. ... A noun, or noun substantive, is a word or phrase that refers to a person, place, thing, event, substance or quality. ...

• proper nouns refer exclusively to the place, object or person named, i.e. nomenclature or a naming system;
• concrete nouns refer to physical objects; and
• abstract nouns refer to concepts and ideas.

Other than lexical words, the lexicon consists of functional or grammatical words which do not refer to objects in the world. Nomenclature is a system of naming and categorizing objects in a given category. ... A name is a label for a thing, person, place, product (as in a brand name), and even an idea or concept, normally used to distinguish one from another. ...

Discussion

Language is more than a functional system for naming things. Most lexical words refer to classes of things (e.g. 'animals' or 'insects') or to concepts (e.g. 'nonhuman'). Depending on the degree of specialisation, language may create a taxonomy or simple categories, but the act of creating a group by reference to one or more similarities, breaks the natural link between a name and its reality. Hence, "copse" is more than "tree" and less than "forest" and, as spatial areas, both copses and forests contain more than trees. Philosophers sometimes distinguish classes from types and kinds. ... A concept is an abstract, universal idea, notion or entity that serves to designate a category or class of entities, events or relations. ... Taxonomy (from Greek ταξινομία (taxinomia) from the words taxis = order and nomos = law) may refer to either a hierarchical classification of things, or the principles underlying the classification. ...

In semiotics, the initial view was that language creates perceptions of reality. By giving salience to particular characteristics by naming them, the community is differentiating things from their context. Then, by making a qualitative judgement of sameness, all things sharing those characteristics may be considered the same. This creates a form of metareality. These perceptions will also be diachronic, i.e. change over time (see Saussure (1857-1913) and his concept of evolutionary linguistics). The major theoretical question is the extent to which members of a culture can rely on their language to be real. Semiotics (originally spelled semeiotics to honour John Locke (1632-1704) who first coined the term semeiotike from the Greek word σημειον or semeion, meaning mark or sign) is the study of signs and sign systems. ... In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. ... Reality in everyday usage means everything that exists. ... A Community is an amalgamation of living things that share an environment. ... Diachronic study is the study of the development of a language over a period of time. ... Ferdinand de Saussure (November 26, 1857 - February 22, 1913) was a Swiss linguist. ... Broadly conceived, linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and a linguist is someone who engages in this study. ...

Saussure believed that language constructs rather than reflects reality. For example, time passes in all cultures but, unless and until a community agrees signifiers for "yesterday, "today", and "tomorrow", there is no conceptual framework within which to discuss the passage of time. Further, even though measurement systems based on diurnal and sideral observation may produce some degree of scientific universality across cultures, this does mean that different communities will discuss time in the same way. In the Chinese language, the verbs are not inflected and do not conjugate, so time is marked adverbially and through suffixes, and the number of participants must be determined from context and collocation. In contrast to Latinate languages where verb forms enable a substantial range of temporal differentiation, the Chinese express their conception of time using a completely different lexicon of language. Similarly, the Chinese have two concepts of face: lien i.e. each individual must preserve their moral character in the eyes of the community, and mianzi, i.e. personal prestige and personal success. This is a fundamental concept to the culture in that loss of face can incapacitate a Chinese person as a member of his or her community. Hence, conflict avoidance and dispute resolution strategies are very different from their Western equivalents. 8:17 am, August 6, 1945, Japanese time. ... For the scientific journal named Science, see Science (journal). ... The word culture comes from the Latin root colere (to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honor). ... Inflection or inflexion refers to a modification or marking of a word (or more precisely lexeme) so that it reflects grammatical (i. ... In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (regular alteration according to rules of grammar). ... An adverb is a part of speech that usually serves to modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, clauses, and sentences. ... Suffix has meanings in linguistics and nomenclature. ... This article is in need of attention. ... A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (to decompose (itself), to glitter), or a state of being (exist, live, soak, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ...

Such contrasts suggest that while the relationships between signifiers and their signifieds are ontologically irrelevant, i.e. philosophically, it would not affect the value of the signs if the words lien and face were transposed between Chinese and English, those relationships influence the cognitive processes and establish the levels of connotation that constitute the social reality in each culture. The controversial Sapir-Whorf hypothesis asserted that people who speak with different phonological, syntactical, and semantic systems construct different world views. Such determinism would now be considered too extreme. The modern theoretical view is that the sign system adopted is simply the means to express all aspects of each culture's evolving understanding of their own reality, i.e. reality is constructed by interaction between mind, perception and meanings. Language is the mechanism through which communities operate a social memory in which common experiences are encoded and decoded. If the experiences or the perceptions of those experiences change, the lexical words used to recall the past must be deconstructed and reconstructed to reflect the new common understanding. It may also lead to the compression of events and the omission of elements of data no longer considered useful. This is also a narrativisation, i.e. the community is constructing a narrative (sometimes of mythic proportions) about its own knowledge and experience that marks some areas of knowledge as more important than others. This changes the symbolic function of the lexical words used to differentiate their value and allows the creation of metadiscourses or metarealities in which communities may reflect upon their knowledge in increasingly more abstract forms. Because this process may be politicised, the values of the lexical words may shift attention away from some areas of knowledge and make that part of the discourse less real. This article is about the philosophical meaning of ontology. ... The term cognition is used in several different loosely related ways. ... Process (lat. ... In semiotics, connotation arises when the denotative relationship between a signifier and its signified is inadequate to serve the needs of the community. ... In linguistics, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (SWH) states that there is a systematic relationship between the grammatical categories of the language a person speaks and how that person both understands the world and behaves in it. ... Phonology (Greek phone = voice/sound and logos = word/speech) is a subfield of grammar (see also linguistics). ... In linguistics, syntax is the study of the rules, or patterned relations, that govern the way the words in a sentence come together. ... In general, semantics (from the Greek semantikos, or significant meaning, derived from sema, sign) is the study of meaning, in some sense of that term. ... A world view, also spelled as worldview is a term calqued from the German word Weltanschauung (look onto the world). The German word is also in wide use in English, as well as the translated form world outlook. ... Determinism is the philosophical conception which claims that every physical event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. ... Narrative is a term which has several and changing meanings. ... For the computer game, see Myth (computer game). ... Knowledge is the awareness and understanding of facts, truths or information gained in the form of experience or learning (a posteriori), or through introspection (a priori). ... This article is about the concept of abstraction in general. ...