Let us now look at the different kinds of signs which we have
introduced.
First let us distinguish between sentences and words.
A sentence I will call every complete sign in a language-game, its
constituent signs are words.
(This is merely a rough and general remark about the way I will use
the words “proposition” and
“word”).
A proposition may consist of only one word.
In 1) the signs “brick!”,
“column!” are the sentences.
In 2) a sentence consists of two words.
Accord
ing
10.
to the r
ole which propositions
play in a language-game, we distinguish between orders, questions,
explanations, descr
iptions, & so on.
8). If in a language-game
similar to 1) A calls out an order: “slab,
column, brick!” which is obeyed by B by bringing a
slab, a column & a brick, we might here talk of three
propositions, or of one only.
If on the other hand,
9)
. the order of words shews
B the order in which to bring the building stones, we shall say
that A calls out a proposition consisting of three words.
If the command in this case took the form, “Slab, then
column, then brick!” we should say that it consisted of
four words (not of five).
Amongst the words we see groups of words with similar
functions.
We can easily see a similarity in the use of the words
“one”, “two”,
“three”, etc. & again one in the
use of “slab”, “column” &
“brick”, etc., & thus we
distinguish parts of speech.
In 8) all words of the proposition belonged to the same part of
speech.
10). The order in which
B had to bring the stones in 9) could have been indicated by the
use of the ordinals thus: “Second, column;
first, slab; third, brick!”.
Here we have a case in which what was the function of the order of
words in one language-game is the function of particular words in
another.