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0.0 Language games
How many kinds of sentences are there? Say assertion, question and command?, there are countless kinds; countless different kinds of use of all the things we call "signs", "words", "sentences". And this diversity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language-games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and get forgotten. We can get a picture of this in mathematics.
The word "language-game" is used here to emphasize the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life.
Consider the variety of language-games in the following examples, and in others:
- Giving orders, and acting on them
- Describing an object by its appearance, or by its measurements
- Constructing an object from a description
- Reporting an event
- Speculating about the event
- Forming and testing a hypothesis
- Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams
- Making up a story; and reading one
- Acting in a play
- Singing rounds
- Guessing riddles
- Cracking a joke; telling one
- Solving a problem in applied arithmetic
- Translating from one language into another
- Requesting, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying
It is interesting to compare the diversity of the tools of language and the ways they are used, the diversity of kinds of word and sentence, with what logicians have said about the structure of language.
This includes the author of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.