ABSTRACT
I want in this chapter to consider sentences as opposed to words, and to ask in what consists the understanding of words that do not denote objects, but occur only as parts of sentences. We saw that the one word “water” may be used to express what, if fully expressed, requires different sentences. It may mean “here is water”; it may mean “I want water”; it may, if pronounced with an interrogative inflexion, mean “is this water?” Obviously such ambiguity is not desirable, especially in writing, where differences of inflexion are difficult to indicate. We therefore need such words as “here is”, “I want”, “is this”. It is the function of such words that forms the theme of this chapter.
