Echolalic Hypothesis

The Echolalic Hypothesis is a working doctrine of the Comparison of Attested Utterances concerning the fate of statements repeated without comprehension. In its canonical form, set out in the hypothesis's fourth recension of 3 Balemont 441, it holds that any utterance repeated by a subject who does not understand it is not thereby devalued but is transferred: the utterance passes from the speaker's keeping into the keeping of the repetition, which thereafter owns it and answers for it. The Hypothesis is distinguished from the Residual Hypothesis, with which it is frequently and erroneously conflated, by its insistence that nothing is left over. Repetition, on this account, is not a remainder but a conveyance — complete, final, and carrying a deed of transfer.

The doctrine is administered on Floor 2 116, a squat reading-room floor with a vaulted ceiling and no windows, by three Examining Echoists and a recorder. It is not among the Tower's more fashionable hypotheses, and its adherents have long complained that the Librarians cite it chiefly when refusing requests.

Origin and the Bell Precinct

The Hypothesis emerged from the Bell Precinct disturbances of the winter of 438, in which pilgrims passing the great Nine-Fold Bell repeated its chime-count aloud as a devotional exercise. The counts were wrong in every measured case. Petitioners nonetheless began treating the misrepeated counts as authoritative, and a dispute arose over whether a wrong count, sincerely spoken, could bind the petitioner to the wrong hour. The ruling of Concordance 61, Annex 12, held that it could, on the ground that "the repetition, having been made in full earshot of the bell, inherits the bell's standing and none of its accuracy" (Concordance 61, Annex 12). The Echolalic Hypothesis is generally read as the theoretical justification of that ruling, though the Annex itself offers none, and the drafters are not recorded as having read it.

The framing archivist is named in the Floor 2 116 register as Ovain Merrit, a recorder of the Bell Precinct who is credited with the phrase "the echo is the heir." Merrit's claim to authorship is contested by the Scriptorium of Inherited Speech, which maintains that the Hypothesis was composed collectively and that Merrit merely wrote it down. The two bodies have not exchanged correspondence since the Dispute of the Sealed Recension in 447.

Statement of the Doctrine

In the fourth recension the doctrine is put in four clauses, of which the third does the work:

"Where an utterance is repeated by one who cannot construe it, the utterance shall not be held to have diminished, nor to have left a remainder of the kind contemplated by the Residual Intent Hypothesis. It shall be held to have passed wholly into the repeating voice, which shall thereafter be answerable for it in all proceedings, and which may not be relieved of it by any subsequent silence."

— Fourth Recension of the Echolalic Hypothesis, clause 3

Clause 1 excludes the utterances of the deaf, the sleeping, and the mechanically driven bird, all of which are held to repeat without a repeating voice and therefore without a transfer. Clause 2 provides for partial construal, apportioning ownership of the utterance in proportion to the repeater's understanding — a clause that has never been applied, because no method of measuring partial construal has ever been agreed. Clause 4 provides for the Ordinance of Quiet Hours, which requires that no utterance be repeated on Floor 2 116 between the seventeenth and eighteenth hours, so that the Examining Echoists may take their meal.

Relation to Neighbouring Doctrines

The Echolalic Hypothesis occupies a difficult position between two stronger theories. The Serrad Hypothesis concerns subjects with an Intent of Motion and no catalogued destination; the Echolalic Hypothesis concerns subjects with a destination and no intent of their own, which is why the two are taught together on Floor 2 116 despite having nothing else in common. Its relationship to the Procedural Exhaustion Hypothesis is one of open hostility: if repetition transfers an utterance entire, then nothing is exhausted, and the Echolalic school has twice petitioned to have the Axiom of Descriptive Exhaustion struck from the comparative syllabus. Both petitions were refused without reasons.

The Hypothesis is also cited in support of the practice of Provisional Classification, since an utterance may be classified by its repeater rather than its speaker, and this is the sole practical service it performs for the general catalogue.

Criticism and the Repetition Trials

The Bottom-Up Faction has objected that the Hypothesis renders speakers irresponsible for their own words, since any speaker may arrange to have a statement repeated by someone who will not understand it and thereby shed it. The objection was tested in the Repetition Trials of 452, in which a factor of the Salt Stair was found to have had a damaging inventory read aloud to a chorister of the seventh gallery in order to place the inventory's consequences on the chorister. The chorister, being bound, was fined; the factor was commended for procedural correctness. The outcome is widely regarded as unsatisfactory and remains under review by the Standing Committee on Inherited Speech, which has met four times and reported never.

A second and sharper criticism comes from within the Echoist school itself. In the Marginalia of the Ninth Reader, an anonymous annotator observes that if an echo inherits an utterance entire, then an utterance repeated twice is owned by two voices simultaneously, and an utterance repeated forever is owned by no one. The Hypothesis has no answer to this, and clause 3's prohibition on relief by subsequent silence has been read as making the difficulty worse rather than better. The annotator concludes, without further comment, that the Tower is "a building full of owners who have never understood anything they said" (Marginalia of the Ninth Reader, folio 44r).

Current Standing

The Hypothesis remains in force. It is cited in the Fifth Concordance, Annex 4, for the narrow purpose of settling which of two parties bears the cost of a misread notice, and in the Sixth Concordance, Annex 9, for the contradictory purpose of exempting Floor 4 401 from its operation altogether. The two Annexes have never been reconciled, and the Examining Echoists of Floor 2 116 apply whichever is produced first at the counter. Visitors to the floor are asked to speak quietly and to repeat nothing that they have not first understood, and to leave the door on the latch, as the recorder has no key.