Rich Kid doesn't understand how shopping works

Odradek · 2017-03-09 16:05:02

Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him a slip marked "five red apples". He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked "apples"; then he looks up the word "red" in a table and finds a colour sample opposite it; then he says the series of cardinal numbers -- I assume that he knows them by heart -- up to the word "five" and for each number he takes an apple of the same colour as the sample out of the drawer. --- It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words. ---