Ancient Greece – Nature vs. Convention
In ancient Greece and Rome the study of language was a part of philosophy. The ancient Greeks first tackled the study of language. The difference between the Greek and the Roman approach was that the Greeks never took things for granted and were more educated in all areas, while the Romans took over the methods and reinterpreted them. The matter in the study of language that the Greeks were most interested in was the relation between words and the meaning of the words (word - world). Even today semanticists wander about the meaning. The origin of meaning was never accurately defined. Plato was the first one to wander about the meaning and the study of language. He was a naturalist. The major issue was the conflict between nature and conventions therefore there were two streams in the science and they were naturalism and conventionalism.
For the naturalists the major term was onomatopoeia, imitation of sounds. They believed that the word meaning should be derived from the imitation of sounds, derived from the world naturally by imitation - sound symbolism. Whenever we name an object there is something in the sound that imitates, implies the referent. There is a sound link between the referent and word. In those days the number of words that imitate nature was great, but today the number has fallen to a 2% of the vocabulary.
Phonaesthetic - There is something in the pronunciation of the word which relates certain aesthetic value and associates to a certain meaning so that the words are motivated. This was the theory of Plato, the first naturalist who believed that nature is the leading principle in life. Through the course of time the connection between the words and the sounds started to fade and nowadays there is no relation between them although the connection might have started by a way of imitation.
The conventionalists based their theory of word meaning on a convention or an agreement. The meaning for them was arbitrary. There is no link between the words and nature; i.e. the words are unmotivated. Empirically speak-
ing there are more words that lack relation with the nature than there are onomatopoeic words. The conflict between the naturalists and the conventionalists persisted until the present days. De Saussure thought that there is no doubt what so ever that the word meaning is conventional.