[the_duck]

    There is no such thing as a sentence, or a phrase, or a part
    of speech, or even a "word"---these are all pareidolic
    fantasies occasioned by glints of sunlight we see reflected
    on the surface of the ocean of language; fantasies that we
    comfort ourselves with when faced with language's infinite
    and unknowable variability.

'Pareidolic' is my new favourite word.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

[ramblenode]

This is a kind of tautology. Words and phrases exists not because of the whims of grammarians but because they are psychological realities for people. They are concepts represented in the mind and brain which exist whether or not people are explicitly aware of their existence--and this is demonstrated in a large psycho- and neurolinguistic literature. This is different from a man on the moon where we are talking about the anthropomorphism of bits of rock and dust--whether the ontology of such a thing is a human face or just bits of rock and dust.

[posterboy]

I don't know, the moon face seems real enough at the moment of seeing it, too.

Linking this to signal theory and the Fourier transform, one point to consider is that solutions are only true in the infinite limit, so a word, a phrase is never enough to represent reality. A sense of continuity is real enough, but discontinuity, too, although I can't position that in a psychological frame. Or Neurological. But speaking with the y combinator in mind, I don't think words are the fixpoints of thought, but feelings are. Maybe onomatopoetic names are and familiar faces are close enough.