One can
easily imagine a language also || also
imagine a language in which B, in reply to a
question by A,
informs him of || has
to report to him the number of slabs or
cubes
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|| stacked up in some place; or
the colours
and forms || or
shapes of
the || certain
building-stones that lie in one
place and
another. || building-blocks.
The purport of such a report might then be:
“five slabs.”. ¤ || Such a report might then
say || be of the form:
“five slabs.”. Now what is
the difference between the report
, or
assertion, “five slabs.”, and
the command “five slabs!”? –
Well, || It
is the role which
the utterance
of || saying these words plays in
the || our language
game || games.
But
the tone of voice in which they are
uttered will probably || probably the tone of voice in which they
are uttered will be different
as
well || too, and the
facial
expression and various other things. But
we
can also imagine || it may well be that
the tone of voice is the same
in both cases – for a
command and a report
can || may
be uttered in
various || a lot
of different tones of voice and with
various || a lot of
different facial expressions – and
that
the difference
lies in the application
alone || may lie only in what is done with the words “five
slabs”. – (Of course we might
also use the words “assertion” and
“command”
just to indicate a grammatical
combination || form of a
sentence
or || and a
word || particular
intonation, just as one
calls || would call
the sentence
, “Isn't it glorious
weather today?”, a question
,
even
though || although it is used
like || as an
assertion.) We could imagine a language in which
all assertions had the form and the intonation of a
rhetorical question; or
every command || in which every command
had the form: “Would you like to
do
that || …?”.
One
would then || might
perhaps say
in this case:
“What he says has the form of a question but
it is really a command”,
i.e. has the
function of a
command
in the practical employment of
language. || .
(Similarly one says “you will do
that || so &
so” not as a prophecy but as a
command. What
makes || would make it
the one
and || , what the
other?)