Cratylus (dialogue)

[1] In the dialogue, Socrates is asked by two men, Cratylus and Hermogenes, to tell them whether names are "conventional" or "natural", that is, whether language is a system of arbitrary signs or whether words have an intrinsic relation to the things they signify.

[5] When discussing an ὄνομα[6] (onoma [7][8][9]) and how it would relate to its subject, Socrates compares the original creation of a word to the work of an artist.

[clarification needed] During more than half of the dialogue, Socrates makes guesses at Hermogenes's request as to where names and words have come from.

He states, "names have been so twisted in all manner of ways, that I should not be surprised if the old language when compared with that now in use would appear to us to be a barbarous tongue.

Socrates rebukes this theory by reminding Cratylus of the imperfection of certain names in capturing the objects they seek to signify.

[a] In Cratylus, Socrates jocularly argues for a folk etymology not from 'unseen' but from 'his knowledge (eidenai) of all noble things".

In Ionic, /w/ had probably disappeared before Homer's epics were written down (7th century BC), but its former presence can be detected in many cases because its omission left the meter defective.

[29]Plato's theory of forms again appears at 439c, when Cratylus concedes the existence of "a beautiful itself, and a good itself, and the same for each one of the things that are".

[30] German psychologist Karl Ludwig Bühler used the Cratylus dialogue as the basis for his organon model of communication, published in 1934.

Voyage en Cratilie' (1976), starts from Plato's speech to argue the idea of arbitrariness of the sign: according to this thesis, already supported by the great linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, the connection between language and objects is not natural, but culturally determined.