Words like duck and tree are arbitrarily assigned to the objects that they represent.

a. True

b. False

This is A) true, the connection between a linguistic sign (a word) and the meaning is completely arbitrary, meaning that it is random. The language was created in such a way that we assigned certain meanings to certain words, randomly. The word duck might as well mean something completely different, but the creators of the languages said that the duck is a duck, and not a dog. That is why it is arbitrary.