Benjamin Whorf highlighted the fact that language is not just a collection of 'referent' words.  It is the patterning of those word that is of fundamental importance.

You have probably heard of star dust' - what is it?  Is it a multitude of stars, a sparkling powder, the soil of the planet Mars, the Milky Way, a state of daydreaming, a poetic fancy, pyrophoric iron, a spiral nebula, a suburb of Pittsburgh, or a popular song?  You don't know, and neither does anybody.  The word - for it is one lexation, not two - has no reference on its own.  Some words are like that (Compare 'kith' and 'throe', which give no meaning, and a bewildering effect, without the patterns kith and kin' and 'in the throes of')  As we have seen, reference is the lesser part of meaning, patternment is the greater.  Science, the quest for truth, is a sort of divine madness like love.  And music - is it not in the same category?  Music is a quasilanguage based entirely on patternment, without having developed lexation.

(from Language, Thought, and Reality)