ABSTRACT
I shall try to be precise, but not, I hope, at the risk of clarity. Thus rigour will sometimes be consciously compromised in favour of perspicuity.1
There is a string, å, consisting of seven signs or typographic shapes, an expression, a linguistic form, that has nine occurrences in Quine’s Word and Object. The first occurrence of a sign in å is an occurrence of double-yu, the twenty-third letter of the English alphabet; the second occurrence of a sign in å is an occurrence of eye, the ninth letter of the English alphabet; the third and fourth occurrences of signs in å are two occurrences of tee, the twentieth letter of the English alphabet; the fifth occurrence of a sign in å is an occurrence of gee, the seventh letter of the English alphabet; the sixth occurrence of a sign in å is an occurrence of ee, the fifth letter of the English alphabet; the seventh occurrence of a sign in å is an occurrence of en, the fourteenth letter of the English alphabet; the eighth occurrence of a sign in å is an occurrence of ess, the nineteenth letter of the English alphabet; the ninth occurrence of a sign in å is the third occurrence of tee; the tenth occurrence of a sign in å is the second occurrence of ee; the eleventh occurrence of a sign in å is the second occurrence of eye; and the twelfth occurrence of a sign in å is the second occurrence of en. Thus, although only seven signs, seven letters, occur in å, there are twelve occurrences of these signs in å. Each of eye, ee, and en occurs twice in å, and tee occurs thrice. In brief, å spelt out is
double-yu*eye*tee*tee*gee*ee*en*ess*tee*ee*eye*en,
where the asterisk ‘*’ indicates concatenation of expressions, in this case letters. (To spell a string of signs, to spell a linguistic form, is to generate from the names of the signs a name of the string by
intercalating a sign of concatenation.2 At times concatenation is indicated by juxtaposition alone.) Further perspicuity is gained if we now adopt the common practice of forming a name of an expression, whether the expression is a single sign or a string of signs, by quoting the expression, that is, ‘by putting the named expression in single quotation marks; the whole, called a quotation, denotes its interior.’3 (Thus Juliet’s question, ‘What’s in a name?’) Then ? is ‘w’*‘i’*‘t’*‘t’*‘g’*‘e’*‘n’*‘s’*‘t’*‘e’*‘i’*‘n’, whence ‘wittgenstein’(or is it ‘Wittgenstein’?).
