Abstract
In the Western world the study of language began as a philosophical inquiry into origins.The Greeks (Third and Fourth Century B.C.) initiated the study of language essentially to explain its origin. The Conventionalists hypothesized that the relationship between the form of language (i.e., primarily the sounds and words) and meaning was essentially arbitrary, a convention of society. The naturalists hypothesized that the form of a word (i.e., its sounds) had a natural association with its referent in the real world. Only certain sound combinations (words or parts of words), however, were directly associated as an imitation of an object, its sound or an idea directly associated as an imitation of an object (e.g., kookaburra).