Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Full download From Perception to Communication: A Theory of Types for Action and Meaning Robin Cooper file pdf all chapter on 2024
Full download From Perception to Communication: A Theory of Types for Action and Meaning Robin Cooper file pdf all chapter on 2024
https://ebookmass.com/product/a-guide-to-sustainable-corporate-
responsibility-from-theory-to-action-caroline-d-ditlev-simonsen/
https://ebookmass.com/product/sovereignty-a-contribution-to-the-
theory-of-public-and-international-law-first-edition-edition-
belinda-cooper/
https://ebookmass.com/product/from-action-to-ethics-a-
pluralistic-approach-to-reasons-and-responsibility-constantine-
sandis/
https://ebookmass.com/product/communication-theory-for-humans-
neil-oboyle/
Movements of the Mind: A Theory of Attention,
Intention, and Action Wayne Wu
https://ebookmass.com/product/movements-of-the-mind-a-theory-of-
attention-intention-and-action-wayne-wu/
https://ebookmass.com/product/a-meaning-to-life-michael-ruse/
https://ebookmass.com/product/introduction-to-dependent-types-
with-idris-encoding-program-proofs-in-types-1st-edition-boro-
sitnikovski-2/
https://ebookmass.com/product/introduction-to-dependent-types-
with-idris-encoding-program-proofs-in-types-1st-edition-boro-
sitnikovski/
https://ebookmass.com/product/environmental-sociology-from-
analysis-to-action-3rd-edition-ebook-pdf/
From Perception to Communication
O X F O R D ST U D I E S I N S E M A N T I C S A N D P R A G M AT I C S
General Editors
Chris Barker, New York University, and Chris Kennedy, University of Chicago
For a full list of titles published and in preparation for the series see pp. 439–40
From Perception to
Communication
A Theory of Types for Action and Meaning
R O B I N C O O P ER
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Robin Cooper 2023
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Some rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, for commercial purposes,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly
permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organization.
This is an open access publication, available online and distributed under the terms of a
Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivatives 4.0
International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), a copy of which is available at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of this licence
should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022945201
ISBN 978–0–19–287131–2
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192871312.001.0001
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
For Jon
who would have read and understood
and then suggested a completely different way of doing it
Contents
General preface x
Acknowledgements xi
How to read this book xii
Introduction 1
I . F R O M P ER C EP T I O N A N D A C T I O N
T O GR A MM A R
I I . T O WA R D S A D I A L O GI C A L V I EW
O F SE M A N T I C S
Conclusion 394
References 419
Symbols and notations used 431
Named types 432
Name index 434
Subject index 437
General preface
I am grateful to many people for discussion of the matters discussed in this book, some
of which has led to significant changes in the material. Among them are: Nicholas Asher,
Ellen Breitholtz, Stergios Chatzikyriakidis, Liz Coppock, Simon Dobnik, Elisabet Engdahl,
Raquel Fernández, Tim Fernando, Jonathan Ginzburg, Eleni Gregoromichelaki, Christine
Howes, Ruth Kempson, Torbjörn Lager, Shalom Lappin, Staffan Larsson, Andy Lücking,
Zhaohui Luo, Bill Noble, Bengt Nordström, Aarne Ranta, Hannes Rieser, Asad Sayeed,
and Kwong-Cheong Wong. Two anonymous referees for Oxford University Press provided
detailed insightful and helpful comments which have led to several important improve-
ments in the final version of the book. None of these people is responsible for what I have
done with their ideas and suggestions.
Andy Lücking provided some beautiful artistic tikz code.
I am also extremely grateful to the linguistics team at OUP, in particular Julia Steer and
Vicki Sunter, for patiently guiding me through the steps of making the manuscript into a
published book.
This research was supported in part by the following projects: Records, types and
computational dialogue semantics, Vetenskapsrådet, 2002-4879, Library-based grammar
engineering, Vetenskapsrådet, 2005-4211, Semantic analysis of interaction and coordina-
tion in dialogue (SAICD), Vetenskapsrådet, 2009-1569, Incremental Reasoning in Dia-
logue (IncReD), Vetenskapsrådet project 2016-01162, Dialogical Reasoning in Patients
with Schizophrenia (DRiPS), Riksbankens Jubileumsfond project P16-0805:1, and Veten-
skapsrådet project 2014-39 for the establishment of the Centre for Linguistic Theory and
Studies in Probability (CLASP) at the University of Gothenburg.
Many of the ideas concerning situation semantics and situation theory which are used in
this book come from collaboration and discussion with Jon Barwise. I would have loved to
be able to discuss this book with him but he was taken from us before it was even conceived.
Let it be a small offering to his memory.
How to read this book
This book is addressed to different audiences. The main ideas of the book can be followed
without delving into all the technical details and I would encourage even readers who have
technical interests to go for the intuitive ideas first and then fill in the technical details of
their realization. Technical developments that might be skipped on first reading are pre-
sented in boxes. The main technical development of the theory of types in these boxed
areas is collected again in the Appendix and some technically interested people may want
to start there and follow the leads back into the body of the book for examples and moti-
vation. In addition, at the end of each chapter there is a summary of what has been added
or changed to the treatment of linguistic phenomena since the previous chapter so that
the development can be followed chapter by chapter. These summaries use (but do not
include) the theory of types presented in the Appendix.
While the book can be read as the development of an argument from beginning to end it
is not necessary to read it that way. Part I of the book gives a basic introduction to the kind of
theory of types that I propose and how I want to use it to analyse action and communication
from a dialogic point of view. Part II takes up a number of central issues in traditional
formal semantics and readers may want to select among these chapters according to their
interests. Where the later chapters rely on things introduced in earlier chapters this is clearly
marked and will lead the reader back to the appropriate place in the book.
When referring to theoretical objects in the text we use single quotation marks, e.g. the
label ‘e’, if the representation of the object does not involve mathematical or logical symbols.
Otherwise double quotation marks are used in the text for items such as informal descrip-
tions of objects introduced in the theory, translations, and quotations. Double quotation
marks are also used in formulae and occasionally in the text to represent informally types of
strings of phonological events, e.g. “Dudamel is a conductor”. Linguistic examples referred
to in the text (as opposed to the numbered examples) are italicized, e.g. Dudamel is a con-
ductor. Names of types, such as Ind, for “individual”, are italicized and begin with a capital
letter.
Material related to this book is available on https://sites.google.com/view/robincooper/
publications/ttrbook.
Introduction
As we interact with the world and with each other we need to classify objects and situa-
tions; that is, we need to make judgements about what types of objects and situations we
are confronted with. This is an important part of what is involved in planning the future
actions we should carry out and how we should coordinate with other agents in carry-
ing out collaborative actions. This is true of action in general, including linguistic action.
This classification needs to be multimodal in that we need to classify what we experience
through different senses and be able to combine the information in order to come to a
judgement. The aim of this book is to characterize a notion of type which will cover both
linguistic and non-linguistic action and to lay the foundations for a theory of action based
on these types. We will argue that a theory of language based on action allows us to take a
perspective on linguistic content which is centred on interaction in dialogue and that this is
importantly different to the traditional view of natural languages as being essentially simi-
lar to formal languages such as logics developed by philosophers or mathematicians. At the
same time we will argue that the tremendous technical advances made by the formal lan-
guage view of semantics can be incorporated into the action-based view and that this can
lead to important improvements both of intuitive understanding and empirical coverage.
In this enterprise we use types rather than possible worlds as commonly employed in stud-
ies of the semantics of natural language. Types are more tractable than possible worlds and
give us more hope of understanding the implementation of semantics both on machines
and in biological brains.
Part I of the book (Chapters 1–3) deals with a theory of types related to perception and
action and shows a way of presenting a theory of grammar within a theory of action. Part II
(Chapters 4–8) then looks at a number of central issues in semantics from a dialogical
point of view and argues that there are advantages to looking at some old puzzles from this
perspective.
In Chapter 1 we introduce a notion of perception of an object or situation as making a
judgement that it is of a type. In symbols, we write a : T to indicate that a is of type T. We
shall talk interchangeably of something being of a type or being a witness for a type. Our
claim is that perceiving something involves classifying it as being of a type, even if that type
is very general (like PhysicalObject or Event)—we cannot perceive it simpliciter. Following
Kant we cannot perceive das Ding an sich (“the thing itself ”) but only in terms of a type that
we assign to it. We present basic notions of the theory of types which will be developed in
the book, TTR, a theory of types with records, which builds to a great extent on ideas taken
from the type theory of Per Martin-Löf although we have made significant changes both
in the general design and aims of the theory and a number of details which appear to us
to be motivated by cognitive and linguistic considerations. The overall approach presented
here owes much to the theory of situations and situation semantics presented by Barwise
and Perry in the 1980s. One of the themes of this book is a working out of parts of the old
situation theory using ideas taken from Martin-Löf ’s type theory.
A central notion in TTR is that of record. The term “record” is used in computer science
for what is often called an attribute-value matrix (AVM) or feature structure in linguistics.
A record is a collection of fields consisting of a label (attribute or feature in the standard
linguistic way of talking) and an object of some kind (which itself can be a record). A
schematic example of a record is given in (1), where the ℓi are labels and the oi are objects
(including situations).
⎡ ℓ = o0 ⎤
⎢ ℓ0 = [ 1 ] ⎥
(1) ℓ2 = o1
⎢ ⎥
⎣ ℓ3 = o2 ⎦
Records are witnesses for record types which are also collections of fields. Rather than
objects, the fields in a record type contain types. In the schematic example in (2) the Ti are
types.
⎡ ℓ1 : T 0 ⎤
(2) ⎢ ℓ0 : [ ℓ2 : T 1 ] ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣ ℓ3 : T 2 ⎦
The record (1) will be of the type (2) just in case the objects are of the types with the same
labelling, that is, o0 : T0 , o1 : T1 and o2 : T2 . Martin-Löf ’s orginal type theory did not
have records or record types though there have been many suggestions in the literature on
how to add them. We have borrowed freely from some of these ideas in TTR although the
way we have developed the notions differs essentially from previous proposals. We will use
records and record types to model situations and situation types in a sense related to that
of situation semantics as developed by Barwise and Perry. The records and record types
are also related to discourse representation structures as introduced by Kamp.
In Chapter 2 we introduce some basic notions of a theory of action based on these types
which will be developed further as the book progresses and apply the theory of types from
Chapter 1 to basic notions of information update in dialogue. Here we build on seminal
work on dialogue analysis by Jonathan Ginzburg and also related computational imple-
mentation by Staffan Larsson leading to the information state update approach to dialogue
systems. We have adapted these ideas in a way that allows us to pursue the questions of
grammar and semantics that we take up in the remainder of the book. A central notion
here is that of the dialogue gameboard which we construe as a type of information state
representing the current state of play in the dialogue from the perspective of a dialogue
participant. It includes the dialogue participant’s view of what has been committed to as
being true in the dialogue so far and what questions are currently under discussion.
In Chapter 3 we show how syntax and semantics can be embedded in the theory of action
characterized in Chapters 1 and 2. Grammatical rules are regarded in terms of affordances
which license us to draw conclusions about the types to be associated with speech events
on the basis of speech events previously perceived. This is in contrast to a formal language
view where language is seen as a set of analysed strings of symbols associated with mean-
ings of some kind. The philosophical ground of the action-based approach goes back to
the relational theory of meaning introduced in Barwise and Perry’s situation semantics
which focusses on the relation between utterance situations and described situations. This
was perhaps the first attempt to generalize the Speech Act Theory developed by Austin and
INTRODUCTION 3
the ambient situation which the agent can perceive by different sense modalities. This we
also represent as a resource using a type—that is, the type for which the ambient situation
would be a witness if the agent’s perception is correct. Yet another place to look is the agent’s
long-term memory (which we will equate with the agent’s beliefs, although one may ulti-
mately wish to make a distinction). This resource is also modelled as a type representing
how the world would be if the agent’s memory or beliefs are correct. (The structured nature
of record types means that they can be used in effect as large repositories of information
indexed by the paths provided by the labels in the record type.) The fact that we are reason-
ing about the extent to which the context type associated with the utterance matches the
types modelling the agent’s relevant resources enables us to talk about cases where there
are names of non-existent objects (that is, the agent’s resource types do not exactly match
the world) or where a single object in the world corresponds to two objects in the resources
or vice versa (another way in which there can be a mismatch between reality and an agent’s
resources). The proposal to represent different aspects of mental states in terms of record
types is closely related to (and inspired by) similar proposals for representing mental states
using discourse representation structures.
In Chapter 5 we look at frames associated with common nouns. (The restriction to com-
mon nouns here has to do with the examples that will be discussed and is not a claim
that only common nouns are associated with the kinds of frames we propose.) The idea
of frames goes back to early work on frame semantics by Fillmore and also psychological
work on frames by Barsalou. We will construe frames as situations (modelled as records in
TTR). We will argue that frame types are an additional kind of resource which is exploited
in natural language semantics. A common noun like dog, in addition to being associated
with the property of being a dog (that is, a simple property characterized in terms of the
single predicate ‘dog’), can also be associated with a type of situation (a frame type) which
is common for dogs, for example, where the dog has a name, an age and various other
attributes we commonly attribute to dogs. We will argue that such a frame can play an
important role in interpreting utterances such as the dog is nine in the sense of “the dog is
nine years old”. Some nouns, such as temperature, seem to represent frame level predicates,
following an analysis suggested by Sebastian Löbner in order to account for the analysis
of utterances like the temperature is rising where it is not the case that some particular
temperature is rising (say, 30°) but that different situations (frames) with different temper-
atures are being compared. Nouns which normally predicate of individuals can be coerced
to predicate of frames. An example is the noun ship in an example originally discussed
by Manfred Krifka: four thousand ships passed through the lock which can either mean
that four thousand distinct ships passed through the lock or that there were four thousand
ship-passing-through-the-lock events some of which may have involved the same ship. We
argue that in order to interpret such examples you need to have as a resource an appropriate
frame type associated with the noun ship.
In Chapter 6 we explore phenomena in natural language which are standardly referred to
as modal and intensional. We argue that types as we conceive them are better placed to deal
with these phenomena than the possible worlds that are used in standard formal seman-
tics. In standard formal semantics propositions are regarded as sets of possible worlds.
For example, the proposition corresponding to a boy hugged a dog is the set of all logi-
cally possible worlds in which a boy hugged a dog is true. What we substitute for this is
the type of situations in which a boy hugged a dog. At an intuitive level these notions are
INTRODUCTION 5
quite similar. They both represent mathematical objects which allow for many different
possibilities as long as the fact that a boy hugged a dog is held constant across them. One
important difference is that sets of possible worlds are extensional sets whereas our types
are intensional. Thus it is possible for us to have two distinct types which have exactly the
same witnesses. One pair of such examples we discuss is Kim sold Syntactic Structures to
Sam and Sam bought Syntactic Structures from Kim. Intuitively we want these to represent
different propositions and we argue that they can yield different truth conditions when
embedded under a predicate like legal. (Under Swedish law, for example, it is illegal to buy
sex but legal to sell sex.) Another pair involves so-called mathematical propositions which
are true in all possible worlds but which nevertheless we would want to represent differ-
ent propositions: Two plus two equals four and Fermat’s last theorem is true (as proved by
Andrew Wiles).
The chapter begins with a discussion of the problems associated with possible worlds
analyses. We then continue with a discussion of modality and in particular of how Angelika
Kratzer’s notions of conversational background and ideals can be seen as resources based
on types and the kind of topoi that Ellen Breitholtz has introduced in the TTR literature.
In the third part of the chapter we discuss what are traditionally regarded as intensional
constructions involving attitude verbs like believe and intensional verbs like need and want.
We treat ‘believe’ as a relation between individuals and types (corresponding to the content
of the embedded sentence). For an individual to believe a type it has to be the case that the
type matches (in a way we make precise) the type which models the beliefs (or long-term
memory) of the individual, that is the same resource that was needed in Chapter 4 to get
the dialogical analysis of proper names to work out.
In Chapter 7 we look at generalized quantifiers from the perspective of dialogic inter-
action. Traditionally generalized quantifiers are treated as sets of sets or sets of properties
and the work of Barwise and Cooper on generalized quantifiers built on this idea. Bar-
wise and Cooper also introduced the auxiliary notion of witness set for quantifiers under
the heading “Processing quantified statements”. In this chapter we turn things around and
make the characterization of witness sets the primary notion in defining quantifiers. This
makes it more straightforward to account for the anaphoric possibilities relating to quanti-
fied expressions in dialogue. We often use quantified statements in dialogue when we have
inadequate information to determine their truth. This is particularly true of determiners
like every and most when talking about large sets. We suggest that this phenomenon can
be analysed by estimating a probability based on the evidence presented in our cognitive
resources (long-term memory or beliefs as discussed in Chapters 4 and 6).
In Chapter 8 we give an account of how TTR types can be used to talk of content which
is underspecified. The idea is to exploit the notion of types which can have several wit-
nesses as “underspecifications” of those witnesses. Rather than associating contents with
utterances as we have done in the earlier chapters, we associate types of contents with utter-
ances. Thus a dialogue participant when observing a speech event associates it with a type
of content rather than a particular content. We show how earlier ideas about the treatment
of underspecification of quantifier scope and anaphora can be accommodated in this view.
PART I
FR OM PER CEP TION A N D ACTION
TO GR A MM A R
Part I presents a theory of types related to perception and action and shows a way of
presenting a theory of grammar within a theory of action.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Among the earliest particulars which Robert gave, was the fact that
he was not alone in his confinement. Various others, all in antique
garb, were in there with him—a corpulent middle-aged gentleman
with tied queue and velvet knee-breeches who spoke English fluently
though with a marked Scandinavian accent; a rather beautiful small
girl with very blonde hair which appeared as glossy dark blue; two
apparently mute Negroes whose features contrasted grotesquely
with the pallor of their reversed-colored skins; three young men; one
young woman; a very small child, almost an infant; and a lean,
elderly Dane of extremely distinctive aspect and a kind of half-malign
intellectuality of countenance.
This last named individual—Axel Holm, who wore the satin small-
clothes, flared-skirted coat, and voluminous full-bottomed periwig of
an age more than two centuries in the past—was notable among the
little band as being the one responsible for the presence of them all.
He it was who, skilled equally in the arts of magic and glass working,
had long ago fashioned this strange dimensional prison in which
himself, his slaves, and those whom he chose to invite or allure
thither were immured unchangingly for as long as the mirror might
endure.
Holm was born early in the seventeenth century, and had followed
with tremendous competence and success the trade of a glass-
blower and molder in Copenhagen. His glass, especially in the form
of large drawing-room mirrors, was always at a premium. But the
same bold mind which had made him the first glazier of Europe also
served to carry his interests and ambitions far beyond the sphere of
mere material craftsmanship. He had studied the world around him,
and chafed at the limitations of human knowledge and capability.
Eventually he sought for dark ways to overcome those limitations,
and gained more success than is good for any mortal.
He had aspired to enjoy something like eternity, the mirror being his
provision to secure this end. Serious study of the fourth dimension
was far from beginning with Einstein in our own era; and Holm, more
than erudite in all the methods of his day, knew that a bodily
entrance into that hidden phase of space would prevent him from
dying in the ordinary physical sense. Research showed him that the
principle of reflection undoubtedly forms the chief gate to all
dimensions beyond our familiar three; and chance placed in his
hands a small and very ancient glass whose cryptic properties he
believed he could turn to advantage. Once "inside" this mirror
according to the method he had envisaged, he felt that "life" in the
sense of form and consciousness would go on virtually forever,
provided the mirror could be preserved indefinitely from breakage or
deterioration.
Holm made a magnificent mirror, such as would be prized and
carefully preserved; and in it deftly fused the strange whorl-
configured relic he had acquired. Having thus prepared his refuge
and his trap, he began to plan this mode of entrance and conditions
of tenancy. He would have with him both servitors and companions;
and as an experimental beginning he sent before him into the glass
two dependable Negro slaves brought from the West Indies. What
his sensations must have been upon beholding this first concrete
demonstration of his theories, only imagination can conceive.
Undoubtedly a man of his knowledge realized that absence from the
outside world if deferred beyond the natural span of life of those
within, must mean instant dissolution at the first attempt to return to
that world. But, barring that misfortune or accidental breakage, those
within would remain forever as they were at the time of entrance.
They would never grow old, and would need neither food nor drink.
To make his prison tolerable he sent ahead of him certain books and
writing materials, a chair and table of stoutest workmanship, and a
few other accessories. He knew that the images which the glass
would reflect or absorb would not be tangible, but would merely
extend around him like a background of dream. His own transition in
1687 was a momentous experience; and must have been attended
by mixed sensations of triumph and terror. Had anything gone
wrong, there were frightful possibilities of being lost in dark and
inconceivable multiple dimensions.
For over fifty years he had been unable to secure any additions to
the little company of himself and slaves, but later on he had
perfected his telepathic method of visualizing small sections of the
outside world close to the glass, and attracting certain individuals in
those areas through the mirror's strange entrance. Thus Robert,
influenced into a desire to press upon the "door," had been lured
within. Such visualizations depended wholly on telepathy, since no
one inside the mirror could see out into the world of men.
It was, in truth, a strange life that Holm and his company had lived
inside the glass. Since the mirror had stood for fully a century with its
face to the dusty stone wall of the shed where I found it, Robert was
the first being to enter this limbo after all that interval. His arrival was
a gala event, for he brought news of the outside world which must
have been of the most startling impressiveness to the more
thoughtful of those within. He, in his turn—young though he was—
felt overwhelmingly the weirdness of meeting and talking with
persons who had been alive in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.
The deadly monotony of life for the prisoners can only be vaguely
conjectured. As mentioned, its extensive spatial variety was limited
to localities which had been reflected in the mirror for long periods;
and many of these had become dim and strange as tropical climates
had made inroads on the surface. Certain localities were bright and
beautiful, and in these the company usually gathered. But no scene
could be fully satisfying; since the visible objects were all unreal and
intangible, and often of perplexingly indefinite outline. When the
tedious periods of darkness came, the general custom was to
indulge in memories, reflections, or conversations. Each one of that
strange, pathetic group had retained his or her personality
unchanged and unchangeable, since becoming immune to the time
effects of outside space.
The number of inanimate objects within the glass, aside from the
clothing of the prisoners, was very small; being largely limited to the
accessories Holm had provided for himself. The rest did without
even furniture, since sleep and fatigue had vanished along with most
other vital attributes. Such inorganic things as were present, seemed
as exempt from decay as the living beings. The lower forms of
animal life were wholly absent.
Robert derived most of his information from Herr Thiele, the
gentleman who spoke English with a Scandinavian accent. This
portly Dane had taken a fancy to him, and talked at considerable
length. The others, too, had received him with courtesy and good-
will; Holm himself, seeming well-disposed, had told him about
various matters including the door of the trap.
The boy, as he told me later, was sensible enough never to attempt
communication with me when Holm was nearby. Twice, while thus
engaged, he had seen Holm appear; and had accordingly ceased at
once. At no time could I see the world behind the mirror's surface.
Robert's visual image, which included his bodily form and the
clothing connected with it, was—like the aural image of his halting
voice and like his own visualization of myself—a case of purely
telepathic transmission; and did not involve true inter-dimensional
sight. However, had Robert been as trained a telepathist as Holm, he
might have transmitted a few strong images apart from his
immediate person.
My next step was to figure out the best time of day to make the
crucial experiment. I finally settled on two-thirty A.M.—both because
it was a good season for uninterrupted work, and because it was the
"opposite" of two-thirty P.M., the probable moment at which Robert
had entered the mirror. This form of "oppositeness" may or may not
have been relevant, but I knew at least that the chosen hour was as
good as any—and perhaps better than most.
I finally set to work in the early morning of the eleventh day after the
disappearance, having drawn all the shades of my living-room and
closed and locked the door into the hallway. Following with
breathless care the elliptical line I had traced, I worked around the
whorl-section with my steel-wheeled cutting tool. The ancient glass,
half an inch thick, crackled crisply under the firm, uniform pressure;
and upon completing the circuit I cut around it a second time,
crunching the roller more deeply into the glass.
Then, very carefully indeed, I lifted the heavy mirror down from its
console and leaned it face-inward against the wall; prying off two of
the thin, narrow boards nailed to the back. With equal caution I
smartly tapped the cut-around space with the heavy wooden handle
of the glass-cutter.
At the very first tap the whorl-containing section of glass dropped out
on the Bokhara rug beneath. I did not know what might happen, but
was keyed up for anything, and took a deep involuntary breath. I was
on my knees for convenience at the moment, with my face quite near
the newly made aperture; and as I breathed there poured into my
nostrils a powerful dusty odor—a smell not comparable to any other I
have ever encountered. Then everything within my range of vision
suddenly turned to a dull gray before my failing eye-sight as I felt
myself overpowered by an invisible force which robbed my muscles
of their power to function.
I remember grasping weakly and futilely at the edge of the nearest
window drapery and feeling it rip loose from its fastening. Then I
sank slowly to the floor as the darkness of oblivion passed over me.
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also
govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most
countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the
United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms
of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying,
performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this
work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes
no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in
any country other than the United States.
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the
method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The
fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty
payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on
which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your
periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked
as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information
about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation.”
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.F.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in
paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED,
INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.