champatsch

Here is the author who is the best model for the "save it «be»" usage of the Book of Mormon. A Scottish English minister, James Canaries. His 1684 book has one example each of pro-form "save it was" (very rare) and "save it were" (rare), and two of "save it be" (uncommon), plus another example of "save it was" as part of a cleft construction. The Book of Mormon has dozens of pro-form examples of these, the only text to have more than five, as well as a few examples of "save it be" as part of a cleft construction. So why are we not told that Canaries influenced Joseph Smith's spiritual language? Because it does not fit a preferred narrative.

I enjoyed watching this. The following scripture was read by Smoot to stress that the Book of Mormon record was not buried in the hill Cumorah. The following is taken from the critical text, which except for the accidentals is how the first edition reads: I wish they would bring the same subject matter expertise and intellectual rigor to their views on Book of Mormon English. I have lightly emphasized above two aspects of the text that Joseph Smith almost certainly did not author. First, we see an early modern switch from finite to infinitive complementation after the verb suffer. There is a 1598 example that is very similar to this syntax, which I have shown in a paper along with another example from Malory involving the verb command. The verbal complementation complex after the verb suffer in the Book of Mormon is unique in several ways (archaic in nature and nonbiblical in pattern), indicating that Joseph Smith did not word the syntax in more than 60 instances. Second, we read one instance of pro-form "save it were," and the Book of Mormon's frequent usage of pro-form "save it were" is exceptional, since almost no texts before the Book of Mormon have any examples. The few texts that do have examples of pro-form "save it were" have only one instance, not more than 70! In addition, the textual usage of "except | save it were" shows a sharp distributional shift toward the end of the book of Helaman, which Joseph Smith was unlikely to have authored, since he probably did not think about shifting from a mixture of "except | save it be | were" to only "save it be | were." The shift could only have occurred consciously, since 86 instances of "save it be | were" occur consecutively, after a prolonged mixture of except and save usage.

Of course a small amount of weak evidence does not overcome a large amount of strong evidence that Joseph Smith did not word the dictated language. For some, it does not matter that they have been repeatedly wrong about important aspects of the text, in order to claim that Joseph Smith worded the Book of Mormon. For example, they have been wrong about the biblical passages, preposterously proposing that Joseph Smith could perfectly visualize images of dozens of pages from 11 books of the King James Bible, including which words were italicized. And even if he could have, the biblical material would read very differently to how it actually reads. So no, Joseph Smith could not have worded the biblical passages. For example, they have been wrong that Joseph Smith dictated using his native expression. This is disproven by various syntactic and lexical evidence, including but not limited to the verbal complementation after verbs of influence (n>700) and the personal relative pronoun complex (n>1600) and dozens of items of nonbiblical archaic vocabulary. So no, Joseph Smith could not have worded these aspects of the text, and many more besides. In a few weeks, I will mention a few more things that also show that the claim that Bunyanesque English influenced Joseph Smith is unfounded. The recent Dialogue paper, which some people are enamored of, constitutes an attempt to paint a one-sided, academically acceptable narrative. A scholarly effort, attempting to arrive at truth, would have examined strong counterevidence to the claim of Bunyanesque influence, the kind that I have presented here and recently in another thread. Until then.

The ungrammatical, extra and usage of the Book of Mormon after some subordinate clauses was not properly accounted for: the biblical syntax after main clauses does not match; in the absence of general textual support, the analysis is non-explanatory. Davis uses “similar English-language models in the New Testament,” especially Matthew 17:20 and Luke 17:6, to explain the ungrammatical and in Helaman 10:9, and by extension all the ungrammatical and usage of the Book of Mormon. The syntax does not line up, acknowledged by Davis as not being “grammatically identical.” Specifically, two main clauses linked by and (which is a ubiquitous type of English syntax) are used as a model for a main clause linked to a subordinate clause by and, which was and is ungrammatical in English. All English speakers have been constantly exposed to and coordination between predicative (main) clauses, and it has not led to and coordination after subordinate clauses preceding main clauses. One cannot legitimately say that biblical examples with corresponding phrasing but distinct syntax gave rise to the Book of Mormon’s anomalous “if|when|as|after|because . . and” usage. The “and it shall remove” in Matthew 17 begins an additional main clause following a main clause, while the “and it shall be done” in Helaman 10 begins a main clause following a subordinate clause. This leads to English grammaticality in the Matthew and Luke examples with clause-initial and, but ungrammaticality in the Book of Mormon examples. The "if . . and" argument made by Davis is either naive or meant to confuse the reader.

Davis asserts that an example involving the phrasal verb give out is a match and explanatory for a nonbiblical archaism in the Book of Mormon involving the simple verb give. Davis provides a biblical scatter example with a meaning that is different from the example with this verb in the title page of the Book of Mormon. The explanation Davis gives for the verb scatter on the title page is a biblical example from Genesis 11:9, where the verb means ‘disperse.’ This is not the meaning of the verb on the title page, so from his perspective, this was a lexical error made by Joseph Smith. The course examples given by Davis are distinct from the usage of Alma 2:24. Bunyan’s examples of “steering one’s course” are quite different from the Book of Mormon’s “in the course of the land of Nephi, we saw . . Lamanites” (Alma 2:24). The biblical divide example given by Davis (2 Kings 2:8, transitive, passive) is not a close match with intransitive depart in Helaman 8:11. From Davis’s perspective, the archaic use of the verb depart in Helaman 8:11 is explained best as paralleling 2 Kings 2:14: “they [sc. the waters] parted hither and thither.” Both part in 2 Kings and depart in Helaman are used intransitively, with an archaic, plural subject waters, to mean ‘divide.’ The verb divide in 2 Kings 2:8 is not on point; it is a transitive verb used in the passive voice. I prefer to confine textual comparisons to intransitive instances of depart meaning ‘divide,’ a usage that died out in the early 1600s. The latest OED example is currently dated 1577; I found a similar example in EEBO dated 1615.

Notice that I do not even have to say that much about lexical usage to show very strong evidence that Joseph Smith did not word the Book of Mormon. Of course the two main aspects of Book of Mormon English usage – lexical and syntactic – mutually reinforce the point of nonbiblical archaism. Unfortunately, inaccurate academic studies like Davis's confuse people who encounter them. If they are not addressed at some point, then people will think they are accurate. At this point, readers of the paper are confused about various aspects of the vocabulary and the syntax of the Book of Mormon. Above I went over the conjunction but. It is an example of the difficulty of syntactic and semantic analysis. People ought to realize that being an educated native speaker of a language does not guarantee linguistic insight about syntax and semantics. I had very little insight until I spent many years of study and took quite a few courses in these fields from professors at various universities and read many linguistic papers and attempted to write many studies and papers. Take Davis's point about the adjective extinct. The definition of Bunyan's extinct example does not match the nonbiblical, archaic usage of Alma 44:7. The Bunyan extinct example is OED definition II.5.a, while the Book of Mormon usage is definition II.4. The definition suggested by Davis for the verb manifest in Alma 36:23 does not match the usage, as long as the verb was used in context to indicate Alma speaking. Indeed, the definition of the verb manifest in aa3623 ultimately depends on whether Alma spoke in order to clarify. If it refers to his speaking, then it is the archaic OED definition 3 usage. The other option is definition 1.a, which involves showing or making evident without speaking.  I see Alma’s standing up as insufficient to show that he had been born of God, and that he clarified the situation for the people by telling them about his experience (cf. Mosiah 27:23–24). Skousen, at NOL 141–42, lists four possible examples of this archaic usage in the Book of Mormon, including aa3623.

In reading Bunyan's Holy War (which Davis highlights), it seemed to me to be more modern in its English usage than the Book of Mormon, even though John Bunyan was born 177 years before Joseph Smith. (Of course this is a general remark, since not all aspects of Bunyan’s text are more modern than Book of Mormon English.) One item readers can easily understand is third-person singular present-tense verb endings. The Holy War primarily employs the verbal suffix {-s}, while the Book of Mormon primarily employs the verbal suffix {-th}. Bunyan even splits has and hath usage, while Joseph Smith dictated about ninety percent hath (hath usage persisted longer in English than most other {-th} usage). However, {-th} verb morphology was more amenable to manipulation by pseudo-archaic authors than other syntactic types. An example of archaic usage that was rarely imitated by pseudo-archaic authors is the archaic variant of the subordinating conjunction after. The original Book of Mormon text has 95 instances of biblical “after that S” used with a personal pronoun subject, whileThe Holy War has only two (e.g. “after that they had hid themselves” 1 Nephi 4:5). Extrapolating based on text length, Bunyan's usage would be 5 compared to 95 in the Book of Mormon. (Only 1 of 25 pseudo-archaic texts has any examples of "after that S," and it has fewer than 10.) As a corollary, The Holy War has only 2 instances of “after that S” with the pluperfect auxiliary had, while the Book of Mormon has at least 50. Extrapolating, the comparison is 5 versus 50. Another item is that the Book of Mormon has 7 “after that”-clauses with subjunctive, modal shall marking. There are no examples in The Holy War, and there is only one in 39 writings checked. This was primarily usage of the 1500s.  Of course we are supposed to believe that Joseph Smith was just a pseudo-archaic author making tons of mistakes as he dictated.

Even if we find many examples of "for this cause that <subject> may|might (not) <infinitive>" in an early 19c text, it does not show that Joseph Smith worded this syntax in his 1829 dictation. Stronger evidence supports him not wording it. According to searches I performed a while ago in the ECCO and Evans databases (mostly 18c), this syntax appears to be another archaic outlier of the Book of Mormon. I do not consider it to be strong evidence or weak evidence, but evidence of archaism nonetheless. Consider again the very weak, one-sided claim of Bunyanesque influence on Joseph Smith wording the Book of Mormon, this time in relation to the overall personal relative pronoun pattern of his 1829 dictation (n > 1600). If he had been so heavily influenced by the personal relative pronoun usage of the King James Bible and John Bunyan, the Book of Mormon would have personal that as number one, followed distantly by personal who(m) and which. Most pseudo-archaic texts prefer who(m) over the other two options. A few prefer that followed by who(m). None prefer which to the other two options. Anyone can look at the first edition of the Book of Mormon and see that it is mostly personal which, which was a minor early modern preference. It was a usage that a small percentage of early modern authors employed, mostly around Shakespeare's time, which is a few decades before and after the year 1600. As I have said before, the effort to make Joseph Smith the one who worded the Book of Mormon must ignore large amounts of counterevidence like this. We know that he did not speak with mostly personal which because of mountains of historical evidence and because he did not speak with the strongly finite verbal complementation of his dictation (since no one ever did, from Middle English forward). The verbal complementation pattern of the Book of Mormon is an archaic, written style employed by only a few authors when they translated Latin texts or Romance language texts in the late middle and early modern periods. Because Joseph Smith did not speak with mostly personal which but dictated that way, these inconsequential personal relative pronouns were shown to him and he dictated them. Those who maintain that he worded the text think that he was acutely aware of his relative pronoun usage throughout the dictation, constantly reminding himself to use personal which, against his personal nonconscious preferences. I reject such an extremely unlikely view of things, especially in the absence of pseudo-archaic support, and because there are other syntactic patterns that he must have also consciously manipulated to a high degree, in order to claim that he worded them. These include the verbal complementation, the way the conjunction save is used, the heavy use of the auxiliary shall as a subjunctive marker in nonbiblical ways, etc.

One other thing with the mis-analysis of but by Davis is that but if was ignored (mh0319), which has the same function and meaning as a subordinating conjunction but introducing a condition (jb0719). Joseph Smith dictated, but did not choose the wording of this but if, the one time it functions as a phrasal subordinating conjunction. That particular lexical usage was already very uncommon at some point during the 16c (1500s). It is frequent in Malory's Morte d'Arthur (c1470). Davis's approach in his paper for such things is either to ignore them or to call them a mistake by Joseph Smith or to mis-analyze the lexical usage or to find some actual matching Bunyanesque usage. Bunyan was an early modern speaker (1628–88), so of course we expect some overlapping lexical usage, since there is so much Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon.

I already mentioned a number of items of countevidence to Bunyanesque influence on Joseph Smith in another thread. Perhaps I will summarize some of them here. One general point is that a theory of Bunyanesque influence applies to other pseudo-archaic authors. So their texts are a test group. Another point is that it goes hand in hand with knowledge of King James English. For now, recall that rhetorical if in the King James Bible, Bunyan's writings, and pseudo-archaic texts is "if so be." In the Book of Mormon, it is consistently "if it so be." Both variants were used in Middle English, sometimes in apparent free variation. For instance, Lydgate's Troy Book (1420) has 13 of the former and 21 of the latter. Lydgate's poem has the most examples of "if it so be" outside of the Book of Mormon, which has 42. Also, only three examples were dictated by Joseph Smith up to 3 Nephi 16, then he dictated 39 of them. So the evidence supports Joseph Smith not wording rhetorical if, and it puts a dent in a claim of Bunyanesque influence.

Yes, the main thing is the phrase type "for this cause that X may|might <infin.>" as well as the number of instances. It's an interesting additional example of syntactic archaism. I was just clarifying the meaning of cause in the phraseology. I think it qualifies as archaic syntax, even though it was still being used marginally after 1700, since the usage rate in texts was much higher before 1700 than after. The Book of Mormon's seven examples appear to make it an anachronistic outlier in this respect. The two texts found to have more were published in the 1580s. If there is a text with more than seven after the 1580s, then the Book of Mormon will be less of an outlier in this regard, but still interesting and still unlikely to have been formulated by Joseph Smith.

In Davis's recent Dialogue article, in which he argues that Joseph Smith was influenced by John Bunyan's English usage, Davis provides two examples from Bunyan's Holy War (1682) for but meaning 'unless, except' in Jacob 7:19: “the walls . . . could never be opened nor forced but by the will and leave of those within” (9); “nor can they by any means be won but by their own consent” (12). A third example from Bunyan's Grace Abounding (1666) is provided in a footnote: “the tempter came in with this delusion, That there was no way for me to know I had faith, but by trying to work some miracle.” Jacob 7:19: "And because that I have thus lied unto God, I greatly fear lest my case shall be awful but I confess unto God." In the Bunyan examples, but precedes a prepositional phrase (OED def. I.1.b). In jb0719, but precedes a clause, and it might precede a subordinate clause that introduces a condition (OED def. II.8.a). This important syntactic and semantic difference does not appear to have been understood by Davis, his colleagues, his reviewers, or his editors. In a later revision of Skousen's write-up (which Davis read), Skousen noted that but followed by a PP was not the Book of Mormon usage. In looking at the current OED definition structure, we can see that the OED differentiates between the conjunction but being used in (i) a simple sentence, (ii) a complex sentence, or (iii) a compound sentence. The OED considers the above Bunyan examples to have but occurring in simple sentences. The but of jb0719 might be a subordinating conjunction introducing a condition in a complex sentence. We are most familiar with but functioning as a coordinating adversative conjunction in compound sentences. In many part of speech tagging systems, the latter is marked as CCB, for conjunction coordinating but, while an archaic subordinating use could be marked as CS, for conjunction subordinating. According to the OED, this use of but died out in the 1500s (latest example 1556). Monte Shelley proposed that but in jb0719 might be a nonbiblical archaism 11 years ago (June 2015). The typical interpretation of jb0719 has been but as part of a compound sentence structure. Skousen does not rule that out entirely, but considers the atypical interpretation to be favored contextually. Skousen wrote up the subordinate, conditional reading for the text-critical publication NOL (2016), on pages 228–29. This is how the relevant part of the NOL entry begins (the entry discusses both but if in mh0319 and but in jb0719): This is just one example of the important errors in Davis's paper, which can confound almost anyone without a background in linguistic analysis. Soon I might write up a brief description of the error of analysis Davis made in relation to about 40 complex sentences in the Book of Mormon that have the syntactic structure "if|when|because|after|as S and S." His mis-analysis also probably confuses nearly everyone who reads his paper, since almost no one is consciously aware of syntactic structure.

Unfortunately, I am not that interested in repeatedly responding to devil's advocate positions that make atomistic points and ignore the improbability of large numbers of occurrences of different types of syntactic usage appearing in the Book of Mormon naturalistically. Also ignored are the large numbers of archaic outliers in the Book of Mormon, some of which have hundreds or dozens of occurrences, some of which have fewer than a dozen occurrences. Finite causatives are one type with more than 100 occurrences. Finite permissives are another type with more than 50 occurrences. Personal "they which" is another type with more than 100 occurrences. And so on and so forth. I have already responded to many spurious claims before. What happens is that sufficient time elapses, people forget, dispositive evidence is ignored, and old, weak claims re-emerge. It is rather stupid, and we all encounter it in various venues. There are so many types of archaic outliers in the Book of Mormon that are not in pseudo-archaic texts, or barely in these texts, that coincidence with past usage is not a valid explanation, since the number of correspondences with various types of archaic English usage goes well beyond coincidence. That is, in view of dozens of types of archaic outliers that are not in pseudo-archaic texts, the varied correspondences with historical usage are not properly classified as coincidental. Those who read this post ought to realize that some commentators think their readers are unable to think things through very well, since these commentators tell them that some Book of Mormon usage is explained as part of Joseph Smith's dialect just because it appears in a few Doctrine and Covenants revelations, even though no one was using the expressions anymore, and had not been using them for many decades before Joseph Smith was born. Commentators expect their readers to believe that various kinds of lexical and syntactic usage somehow skipped many or several generations of English speakers and just landed in his idiolect. As one example, take the "of which hath been spoken" type, meaning 'previously mentioned' (no overt grammatical subject). There are 10 in the Book of Mormon (4 varieties), two in the witness statements, and three more in other revelatory output of Joseph Smith's (1830 preface and Doctrine and Covenants revelations). This type of language was very rarely used after the 1680s. Known examples are British. In well over 30 billion words, between 1690 and 1830, I currently do not find any original examples (limited to "of which|whom hath|has been spoken"; allowing intervening adverbs like already, but excluding cases with intervening pronominals like it or enough). (One 1735 example in ECCO ["of which already hath been spoken"] dates originally to 1684, to a work by Anthony Sparrow.) Before 1690, there are a few dozen examples of this syntactic type without an overt grammatical subject (mostly with which, secondarily with whom), and hardly any texts with more than one example. (The usage first appears around 1550; I have so far noted only two texts with more than one example: two examples each; cf. the Book of Mormon's 10.) According to those who profess to have great linguistic insight into Book of Mormon English while studying it to a limited degree, we are supposed to accept that this peculiar archaic syntax (missing an expletive it ), was part of Joseph Smith's dialect, despite the absence of external textual support.

A recent Dialogue article – Davis: Joseph Smith’s Spiritual Language – is riddled with errors of linguistic analysis. Various people were involved in the creation of the article. They were apparently unable to clean up the many errors they ought to have recognized. The paper is a fine example of naive or deliberate one-sided argumentation. Many cases of counterevidence were not dealt with. I have mentioned some here recently. Similarly, the vague claim that Joseph Smith spoke very archaically (never substantiated) and that accounts for the English usage is clearly wrong, as shown by the verbal complementation and many other things, including a vast array of other usage in the text as well as his early letters and his mother's biography. The two clearest textual examples are the verbal complementation after the verbs suffer and cause. They exhibit an archaic, written, translation pattern, which no one ever spoke with, from the 1300s forward. Because the pattern is not an archaic spoken pattern, they show that the archaic maintenance argument is wrong and non-explanatory. For example, the Book of Mormon has over 100 more finite causatives than any other text before it, at around 60% finite. No one ever spoke that way in English. The only way that robust pattern appears in the dictation language is if Joseph Smith repeatedly reminded himself to employ finite causatives from the very start of his 1829 dictation in Mosiah. Even his thinking about such a thing is a highly unlikely scenario, since there was no general pseudo-archaic impulse to do so and he was not linguistically astute in 1829. And to be able to implement the syntax 136 times is another highly unlikely scenario. Likewise with the verb suffer. Likewise with the verb command. Furthermore, the Book of Mormon has 12 ditransitive causatives, syntax that was obsolete during most of the 18c and into the 19c. Not even lengthy early modern texts have more than four of these. This exposes a recent assertion here as an incorrect speculation – that everything was being used in the early 19c – which I have disproven before with other syntax like "save he shall prepare" or "it supposeth me that S." No one ever formulated the impersonal, simple dative syntax with the verb suppose – save it were Joseph Smith – since a poet did it once in the late 1300s. The attempt to make Joseph Smith the author of the English of the Book of Mormon takes cover from academic priorities, which can only ever accept such a position. It is up to the interested to discern whether the academic arguments are sound and explanatory. As an informed analyst, who goes beyond mere speculation, I can tell you that the Book of Mormon has dozens of archaic outliers that resist naturalistic explanations, as well as the complex English usage shift that occurs toward the end or after the book of Helaman, of which hath been spoken.

What I wrote above and below is confusing and not well worded. I wrote and edited the first part of the first sentence, and then did not adjust the wording of the second part of the first sentence to fit the edit. Rewrite: The opening rate of "those which" (~75%) fits a pseudo-archaic assumption best (and shows Joseph Smith to be an exceptional pseudo-archaic author). The closing rate of "those which" (~8%) also fits a pseudo-archaic assumption, but the low relative percentage was not as likely a distribution for such an author, since "those which" was more persistent than "they|them which" historically, and personal "those which" was used by 2 of 25 pseudo-archaic authors, while personal "they|them which" was used by just 1 of 25.