Brown Book: Difference between revisions

It is natural for us to call gestures, as those employed in 4), or pictures as in 7), elements or instruments of language. (We talk sometimes of a language of gestures.) The pictures in 7) & other instruments of language which have a similar function I shall call patterns. (This explanation, as others which we have given, is vague, and meant to be vague.) We may say that words and patterns have different kinds of functions. When we make use of a pattern we compare something with it, e.g., {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,12}} a chair with the picture of a chair. We did not compare a slab with the word “slab”. In introducing the distinction, “word, pattern”, the idea was not to set up a final logical duality. We have only singled out two characteristic kinds of instruments from the variety of instruments in our language. We shall call “one”, “two”, “three”, etc. words. If instead of these signs we used “-”, “--”, “---”, “----”, we might call these patterns. Suppose in a language the numerals were “one”, “one one”, “one one one”, etc., should we call “one” a word or a pattern? The same element may in one place be used as word & in another as pattern. A circle might be the name for an ellipse, or on the other hand a pattern with which the ellipse is to be compared by a particular method of projection. Consider also these two systems of expression:

{{parBB|42}} A gives orders to B: they are written signs consisting of dots and dashes and B executes them by doing a figure in dancing with a particular step. Thus the order “-.” is to be carried out by taking a step and a hop alternately; the order “..---” by alternately taking two hops and three steps, etc. The training in this game is “general” in the sense explained in 41); and I should like to say, “the orders given don't move in a limited range. They comprise combinations of any number of dots and dashes”. ‒ ‒ But what does it mean to say that the orders don't move in a limited range? Isn't this nonsense? Whatever orders are given in the practice of the game constitute the limited range. ‒ ‒ Well, what I meant to say by “the orders don't move in a limited range” was that neither in the teaching of the game nor in the practice of it a limitation of the range plays a “predominant” role (see 30)) or, as we might say, the range of the game (it is superfluous to say {{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,35}} limited) is just the extent of its actual (“accidental”) practice. (Our game is in this way like 30)) Cf. with this game the following:

{{parBB|43}} The orders and their execution as in 42); but only these three signs are used: “-.”, “-..”, “.--”. We say that in 42) B in executing the order is ''guided'' by the sign given to him. But if we ask ourselves whether the three signs in 43) guide B in executing the orders, it seems that we can say both yes and no according to the way we look at the execution of the orders.

If we try to decide whether B in 43) is guided by the signs or not, we are inclined to give such answers as the following: ''a'') B is guided if he doesn't just look at an order, say “.--” as a whole and then act, but if he reads it “word by word” (the words used in our language being “.” “-”) and acts according to the words he has read.

Let us try this explanation: A person reads if he derives the copy which he is producing from the model which he is copying. (I will use the word “model” to mean that which he is reading off, e.g., the printed sentences which he is reading or copying in writing, or such signs as “--..-” in 42) and 43) which he is “reading” by his movements, or the scores which a pianist plays off, etc. The word “copy” I use for the sentence spoken or written from the printed one, for the movements made

{{BBB TS reference|Ts-310,73}} according to such signs as “--..-”, for the movements of the pianist's fingers or the tune which he plays from the scores, etc.) Thus if we had taught a person the Cyrillic alphabet and had taught him how each letter was pronounced, if then we gave him a piece printed in the Cyrillic script and he spelt it out according to the pronunciation of each letter as we had taught it, we should undoubtedly say that he was deriving the sound of every word from the written and spoken alphabet taught him. And this also would be a clear case of reading. (We might use the expression, “We have taught him the rule of the alphabet”.)