I have long understood language from a neuroscience perspective is a means of sharing thoughts.  If you see a car there is a cluster of neurons that light up saying &#x27;car&#x27;.  Apparently the same thing happens if you remember a car.  Language taps in to that memory aspect and lights up the same associations.<p>Thus, the word Happy is the abstract feeling&#x2F;memory of being happy and can have different but related meanings to everyone.  Ditto, stop, gerund, pi etc.<p>IMO, abstractions past that point have more to do with redundant encoding than anything else.