Even ready-made sentences do not pre-exist their use in speech

Evidence

In reality, speech is not put together from preceding words, but quite the reverse: words emerge from the whole of speech (aus dem Ganzen der Rede). — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 749 (#expands, via linked claim)

For a long time psychologists have observed that the word is not the concrete element of speech—not even the word of the dialect or the word of the family with its particular variation; the elementary structure of speech is the sentence. It is within the sentence, in fact, that the word can receive a real function as a designation; outside of the sentence the word is just a propositional function—when it is not a pure and simple rubric designed to group absolutely disparate meanings. … The word therefore has only a purely virtual existence outside of complex and active organizations which integrate it. It can not exist “in” a consciousness or an unconscious before the use which is made of it: the sentence is not made out of words. … If this is true, then neither the words nor the syntax, nor the “readymade sentences” pre-exist the use which made of them. Since the verbal unity is the meaningful sentence, the latter is a constructive act which is conceived only by a transcendence which surpasses and nihilates the given toward an end. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1215 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Speech is built from whole sentences, not pre-existing words — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 1215; Words emerge from whole speech, not from combination of words — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 749; Speech is a continuous signal flow, not discrete concatenated units

Broader Connections

• Words emerge from whole speech, not from combination of words #expands (0.90) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 749
• Speech is built from whole sentences, not pre-existing words #corroborates (0.88) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 1215
• Speech is a continuous signal flow, not discrete concatenated units #expands (0.85)