“
Well
[b|B]ut if someone says ‘Bring
me a
slab’ it
looks
now as
though he could mean this expression as one long word, –
corresponding
to the
word one word
‘slab!’.” – Can one
mean it sometimes as one word and sometimes as four
words? And how does one generally mean it? – I
that what we
shall be inclined to say
: is that we mean the sentence
as a sentence of
four words when we are using it as
contrasted with sentences
, “
Hand me
a slab”, “Bring
him a
slab”, “Bring
two slabs”,
etc.: as contrasted, that is, with
sentences which contain the words of our command in
combinations. – But what does using one sentence
as in contrast
ed
with to other
sentences consist
in? Does one have these
ˇother sentences in
mind at the time? And
all of them?
And while one is speaking the sentence, or before or
afterwards? – No. Even if such an
explanation has some attraction for us, we have only to
f
[r|o]r a moment what actually happens in order to see
that we are on
a
wrong track
the wrong road here |
. We say we use
th
[at|is]
command
as in
contrast
ed with
to other sentences because
our language contains the possibility of these other
sentences.
// because in our language
these other sentences are possible. Someone who
did not understand our language, a foreign
er who had
frequently heard someone giving the command “Bring
me the slab”, might suppose that this entire series of
sounds was one word and corresponded, say, to the word
“building
”
in his language. If he had then to give this command
himself,
[w|h]e would perhaps pronounce it
differently and we
12
we should say:
He pronounces
thi it so
because he
takes thinks it
to be
is
one word. – But
then doesn't
different
happen in him when he u
[e|t]ters
, corresponding
to the fact that he
takes views
regards the sentence
s to be
as one
word? The same thing may happen in him, or again
something differ
ent may. What happens in you
when you give a command of that sort
? Are
you conscious that it consists of four words
while you
are uttering it? Of course, you
this language,
– in which there are those other sentences also,
– but is this
something
that happens while you are uttering the
sentence
? – And I have admitted,
ˇthat the foreigner
who views
the sentence differently will probably also pronounce it
differently,
will
probably give the sentence he views differently a
different pronounciation; |
but what we call
wrong
doesn't
in
anything that accompanies the uttering of the command.
(Of
th
[at|is]
m
[l|o]re later.)