What || Now
what do the words of this language
denote? –
How can
this show itself – what they denote –
except || What they denote – how is this to appear,
unless in the way they are used? And this
is what we have described. The expression, “this
word denotes
that || so
& so” would
have then to
be || now become a part of this
description. Or: the description
should || is to be put in the
form: “The word … denotes
…”.
Now
one can certainly shorten || it
certainly is possible to condense the description of the
use of the word “slab”
in
this way, and say || into saying that
this word denotes this object.
That || This
is what one would do
, for instance, if the question
was || were simply || if the question were, for
instance, to prevent the misunderstanding
of
thinking that the word “slab” referred to
the kind of
building stone that || block
which we actually call a
“cube”,
while || and the
particular sort of
“reference”
this
is || , however,
i.e.
everything else about the
use of || all the rest of the game with these
words,
is || were
familiar.
Similarly one might say that the signs
“a”, “b”,
“c”, etc. denote
numbers
when this
removes || , if this is to remove the misunderstanding
of thinking that “a”,
“b”
,
“c”, play the role in
the || our language which
actually is
7
¤ played by
“cube”, “column”,
“slab”. And one can say also that
“c” denotes this number and not that, –
when this is to explain, say, that the letters are to be used in
the order “a”, “b”,
“c”, “d”
etc., and not “a”,
“b”, “d”,
“c”.
But
because you
assimilate || by assimilating in this way
the
description || descriptions
of the
use of these words to
one another, their use doesn't || uses of words to one
another, their uses don't
grow || become more
similar
: || . For
, as we
have seen, their
use is || uses are of widely
different sorts.