I would like to suggest that the fractal nature of the universe is precisely due to the fact that it is a single self-referential entity built on infinitely (or practically) layered levels of patterned (networked) energy. The complexity that arises from such a hyper-network leads to gaps of non-interoperable between the spatial-temporal structures that arise within it. This results in the appearance within our own reality that things are in fact separate from each other and in fact composed of other smaller things which are also separate from each other.

Language is an information vehicle of the auditory medium (resonate vibration of surrounding matter-energy structures) and the patterns of information that exist therein attempt to correspond to and model our similar perception of this perceived reality. At the most basic level, as you mentioned, all of our vocabulary is cyclical in nature and hierarchically metaphorical. That is, we must start with vague concepts with which we can all agree on and then begin to segment those word-concepts further with smaller word-concepts yielding abstract polarities, and creating a kind of artificial conceptual space which pushes and pulls the originally vague word-concept into further structure without ever really getting anywhere specific... although it appears you have. When we say specific, we really mean further removed from the outer agreed upon generalization. The inner structure is really more about how the information maps to itself rather than how it maps to the world, but we construct a useful lexicon based on the combination of the reality we perceive and the abstract linguistic information structure we have available to us and with which we cognitively represent our world.

Of course modern human languages are much more complex than the first ones would have been, and we are taught to jump right in from birth at the present complex level. No doubt this complexity has evolved over time. And that goes for both the universe and our languages.