“Well but || But if someone says ‘Bring me a slab’ it looks now || now looks as though he could mean this expression as one long word, – correspondingnamely || , that is, 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 believe || think 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 such as || like, “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 different || other combinations. – But what does using one sentence as contrasted with || in contrast to other sentences consist in? Does one have these other 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 think || consider for a moment what actually happens in order to see that we are on the wrong road here || a wrong track. We say we use that || this command as contrasted with || in contrast 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 foreigner 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 stone || block” in his language. If he had then to give this command himself, he would perhaps pronounce it differently and we

¤ should say: He pronounces it so curiously || queerly because he takes it to be || thinks it is one word. – But then doesn't anything || something different happen in him when he utters this sentence || it, corresponding to the fact that he takes the sentences to be || views the sentences as || regards the sentence as one word? The same thing may happen in him, or again something different 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 have a mastery of || know this language, in which there are those other sentences also, – but is this mastery || knowing something that happens while you are uttering the sentence? – And I have admitted, that the foreigner will probably give the sentence he views differently a different pronunciation; || who views the sentence differently will probably also pronounce it differently, but what we call the || his wrong view || idea doesn't have to lie || necessarily consist in anything that accompanies the uttering of the command. (Of that || this more later.)

(2015–) Wittgenstein Source Bergen Nachlass Edition (WS-BNE). Edited by the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen under the direction of Alois Pichler. In: Wittgenstein Source, curated by Alois Pichler (2009–) and Joseph Wang-Kathrein (2020–). (N) Bergen: WAB.