helen keller | nominal realism

Helen Keller, who became blind and deaf at the age of 18 months, was gradually taught to speak to her nurse. At the age of 9 while playing with water she felt with her hand the motions of the nurse's throat and mouth vibrating the word 'water'. IN a sudden flash of revelation she cried out words to the effect that 'everything has a name!'

It is hardly that, even in mid-childhood, children sometimes appear to have difficulty in separating words from what they represent.

This is illustrated by Jean Piaget in an interview with a child aged 9.

'Could the sun have been called "moon" and the moon "sun"?'
'No.' 'Why not?'
'Because the sun shines brighter that the moon...''But if everyone had called the sun "moon", and the "moon" sun, would we have known it is wrong?'
'Yes, because the sun is always bigger, it always stays like it is and so does the moon.''Yes, but the sun isn't changed, only its name. could it have been called...etc.?'
'No...because the moon rises in the evening, and the sun in the day.'
(Piaget 1929: 81-2)

Therefore, for the child, words do not seem at all arbitrary.