Keelefilosoofia raamat
of the builder's making the noise "slab" is just to get the assistant to do
something, to trigger conventionally (the assistant having learned his trade)
a pattern of useful activity. The activity does involve things of this shape, but
the primary point is to initiate action, not to refer, or to "express" an eternal
proposition.
"Use" theories 79
Of course, it is hard to extrapolate this simple picture of meaning as brutely
conventional social function to long and complex sentences like "The present
Queen of England is bald" or "In 1931, Adolf Hitler made a visit to the United
States, in the course of which he . . . ," neither of which has any easily identifi-
able conventional social role (other than, unhelpfully, those of asserting that
the present Queen of England is bald and that in 1931 . . . ). Some additional
mechanism must be introduced to accomplish that extrapolation. The logical
annaabi.ee 
