Plato was the first philosopher we know was interested in philosophy of language although his teacher Socrates probably was too He believed that the smallest parts of words phonemes had meaning even if they were outside the words they are in This is not a very good theory and Plato understood that there were things wrong with it The Stoics also made a complicated philosophy of The Middle Ages The medieval scholars, such as William Occam also were interested in philosophy of language Occam was the first philosopher to think about the possibility of a mental language He also discussed how a word can refer to both its meaning and the actual word itself Modernity 