Well, on a perhaps superficial reading of Locke, he had a philosophy of language whereby words signified ideas and not things in the world and the idea of language as resting on conventions and learning is problematic in that context if the conventions have to be agreed on concerning things locked away in the mind and not in the world. The idea that the use of words is based on convention goes back at least as far as Aristotle's On Interpretation but so too does the idea that words signify mental experiences. So the kind of tension that is at play in the paradox of learning colour words, and which strains at Locke's philosophy of language, is already there to find in Aristotle, who of course figured large in the Scholastic tradition. So it would be no surprise to me if at some stage there were a battle within Scholasticism over the priority of ideas or conventions in accounting for the meaning of words, and the "parlour game" of learning colour words might have been used as a sophistical tool. But now I'm just speculating wildly.

Your speculation seems pretty good. All we need is some suggestion from someone that such a trope, whether as parlour game or not, was indeed in circulation.

Just kind of a side note:

Oxford University Press drew attention last year for deciding that, in the New Oxford Shakespeare, the plays Henry VI, Parts 1, 2, and 3 would no longer be listed as having been written by Shakespeare alone. Instead the title pages will say: “By William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.”

There you go! Shakespeare's shade has been muttering, "What the hell are these knaves nattering on about?" Meanwhile Marlowe's shade has been muttering , "Why the hell don't these knaves ask me--I wrote that section, and NEVER got credit for it. I'm still bitter and resentful about it. Where is a ouija board when we need one?"

No-one has thought it was all Shakespeare for decades. That Marlowe collaborated is possibly relevant here inasmuch as he was university educated and therefore, presumably, philosophically literate.

Yes, because Marlowe apparent;y met with Giordano Bruno in 1880s when Bruno visited London. Bruno was kind of a nut, but a well informed nut.

Can we get back to the point? @MetaphysicsNow was onto something.

I've only skimmed it, but typing in "scholastic roots of the private language argument" turned up this link:
Origns of the Private Language Argument

It's mostly focused on tracing the ideas in Wittgenstein's arguments against private languages within post Cartesian (and even more specifically post-Frege) tradition, but p 70 talks about some early Christian cleric called Arnobius casting doubt on the idea that language makes sense outside of communal context. So it is definitely a theme in thought prior to Locke. But that's as far as I'll be going with this - although it's an interesting topic in the history of philosophy, so maybe you should start a different thread "Calling all experts on Scholastic philosophy...." there might be one or two skulking around this forum.:wink:

I’ll do that. Thanks for yr interest.