speech. And yet these sign-languages prove to be
pictures, even in the ordinary sense, of what they represent.

4.012 It is obvious that a proposition of the form 'aRb' strikes us as
a picture. In this case the sign is obviously a likeness of what is
signified.

4.013 And if we penetrate to the essence of this pictorial character, we
see that it is not impaired by apparent irregularities (such as the
use [sharp] of and [flat] in musical notation). For even these
irregularities depict what they are intended to express; only they do it
in a different way.

4.014 A gramophone record, the musical idea, the written notes, and the
sound-waves, all stand to one another in the same internal relation
of depicting that holds between language and the world. They are all
constructed according to a common logical pattern. (Like the two youths
in the fairy-tale, their two horses, and their lilies. They are all in a
certain sense one.)

4.0141 There is a general rule by means of which the musician can obtain
the symphony from the score, and which makes it possible to derive the
symphony from the groove on the gramophone record, and, using the first
rule, to derive the score again. That is what constitutes the inner
similarity between these things which seem to be constructed in such
entirely different ways. And that rule is the law of projection which
projects the symphony into the language of musical notation. It is
the rule for translating this language into the language of gramophone
records.

4.015 The possibility of all imagery, of all our pictorial modes of
expression, is contained in the logic of depiction.

4.016 In order to understand the essential nature of a proposition, we
should consider hieroglyphic script, which depicts the facts that it
describes. And alphabetic script developed out of it without losing what
was essential to depiction.

4.02 We can see this from the fact that we understand the sense of a
propositional sign without its having been explained to us.

4.021 A proposition is a picture of reality: for if I understand a
proposition, I know the situation that it represents. And I understand
the proposition without having had its sense explained to me.

4.022 A proposition shows its sense. A proposition shows how things
stand if it is true. And it says that they do so stand.

4.023 A proposition must restrict reality to two alternatives: yes
or no. In order to do that, it must de