Where did the Book of Mormon Take Place?

[the narrator]

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

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.

The game of whack-a-mole continues. Let's break this down.

First of all, it appears numerous times in Joseph's revelations, history, and writings of his contemporaries.

Second you write,

1 hour ago, champatsch said:

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.

Your logic is laughably bad here. Not only does its presence in Joseph's other religious writings add to the likelihood that Joseph was wording the Book of Mormon, your own claim here points to Joseph being the speaker. The phrase "if it so be" only appers 3 times in the first 290 pages of our current text of the BofM between Mosiah and 3 Ne 15--or once ever 100 pages on average. Between 3 Ne 16 and WofM (roughly 245 pages) it appears 39 times--or roughly 16 for every 100 pages. (I counted only 29, but I'm guessing you also counted variants such as "if so it shall be" and others. But if so, you should let Ryan and Webbles know so that they don't stubbornly demand it only be "if it so be.") That it's number of uses significantly increased during the translation and continued at the same pace when Joseph turned to dictating the small plates points to Joseph being the one wording the text.

Edited May 5 by the narrator

[the narrator]

19 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

They obviously don't have the "same syntactical structure." Rather the various structures provide the same grammatical function (and some of your examples--such as 3 Nephi 27:15 and D&C 74:5--appear to not be valid, even on that front). 

They obviously do. It's sad that you can't see it. Let's break this down.

3 Nephi 27:15:

"for this cause have I been lifted up; therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me, that  they may be judged according to their works." (3 Ne. 27:15)

Here, "therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me," is an independent clause inserted in as an aside. It doesn't disrupt or altar the syntax structure. And numerous similar examples could be found in EModE texts. That it is an independent clause that doesn't altar the structure can be readily seen if we remove it:

"for this cause have I been lifted up that  they may be judged according to their works."

D&C 74:5

"for this cause the apostle wrote unto the church, giving unto them a commandment, not of the Lord, but of himself, that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever" (D&C 74:5)

this is fine just is. It's just that "he apostle . . . but of himself" is really long description of the thing that was done so "that a believer should not..."

30 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

By way of analogy, when Yoda says "powerful you have become," that sentence has the same semantic meaning as "you have become powerful." It is the same set of words and they share the same grammatical relationships. However, each sentence has a different syntactic order or structure.

You must be really bad at logic and analogies. This is not analogous at all. You are literally changing the order of the syntax here:

"powerful you have become" A B C D

"you have become powerful ." B C D A

On the other hand, every single one of my examples had each part of their syntax in the exact same order.

Ryan, do you even know what an analogy is?

35 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

And that simple reordering of words sometimes makes a big difference.

good thing nothing was reordered. I literally color-coded each sentence so that you can readily see that they were ALL in the same order. Are you color-blind?

37 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

There are probably hundreds if not thousands of instances of phrases with the form "you have become X" in the databases of the English language. There will be far fewer examples of "X you have become" in those same databases. One syntactic structure is normative English and the other isn't. This means that, in practical terms, most English speakers (at least up until Star Wars came out and popularized this particular phrase) were probably not ever going to use the phrase "X you have become" even though it has the same semantic meaning as "you have become X." Sometimes alternative syntactic arrangements (which hold the same grammatical relationships and the same semantic meaning) are used with similar or relatively similar frequencies. For instance, in English one could say "he came to the store yesterday" or, alternatively, "yesterday, he came to the store." In these examples, both types of syntax are common. So it just depends on what the structures are, but there is no question that some types of arrangements are exceedingly rare during certain periods of the English language. Which means the specific ordering of words definitely can and often does matter. 

Why do you waste so much time writing about strawmen?

 

[the narrator]

37 minutes ago, webbles said:

The "for this cause ... that X may|might <infin>" is also another form.  But it is different from the "for this cause that X may|might".  Both are in EModE.  The former still shows up in modern English.  The later is pretty much gone.

Sure, and that Joseph used both of them in both the Book of Mormon and his revelations points to him being the one wording both.

[the narrator]

On 5/4/2026 at 5:34 PM, Ryan Dahle said:

Rather than just throwing out abstract questions, why don't you make an actual proposal outlining some sort of divine methodology that makes more sense than Joseph already having a religious dialect he was familiar with and dictating a blend of archaic features to make it sound older and more authoritative.

Ryan, please. Help me understand why you think God was mixing native EModE in with 19th century language and ideas. Was it just random or was there a method to it? What was the basic process like? And why, did some of the language change that began later in the Book of Mormon continue into the small plates--such as the "if it so be" that Carmack notes, or the switch from "therefore" to "wherefore" that Brent Metcalfe identified. For me the best and simplest explanation is that Joseph was the one wording the text, and these reflect his own evolving way of phrasing things as he worked through the translation. How do you explain it?

[champatsch]

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.

Edited May 6 by champatsch

[webbles]

4 hours ago, the narrator said:

Sure, and that Joseph used both of them in both the Book of Mormon and his revelations points to him being the one wording both.

I would say it is ambiguous by itself.  This structure, by itself, doesn't argue for or against EModE.  Joseph could have had it as part of his idiolect (as I think Davis calls it).  But he only uses it once in D&C and uses it 7 times in the Book of Mormon.  So did he pick it up because of what he learned from the Book of Mormon?  Or did he have it before?  He doesn't use it enough to make the case either way.  He uses the other form that you've pointed to several times but that is an EModE form that lasts into modern English so that form doesn't help in this argument either.

For me, the main draw to EModE isn't just one or two structures like this.  It is that there are a bunch and some aren't as easily explained.

[webbles]

5 hours ago, champatsch said:

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.

Is this one of the things that switches around 3 Nephi?

I was recently asking claude about the therefore to wherefore switch, and it pointed out that from Mosiah to 3 Nephi, it was mostly 3rd person narrative (Mormon abridging the plates).  Then from 3rd Nephi to Words of Mormon, it has a lot of 1st person (3rd Nephi has Christ speaking, Mormon is from Mormon's point of view, Moroni is Moroni and epistles from Mormon, and the small plates are all 1st person).  And that could possibly explain the switch of therefore to wherefore.  Could that explain the other things that you've found?

[Ryan Dahle]

7 hours ago, the narrator said:

They obviously do. It's sad that you can't see it. Let's break this down.

3 Nephi 27:15:

"for this cause have I been lifted up; therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me, that  they may be judged according to their works." (3 Ne. 27:15)

Here, "therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me," is an independent clause inserted in as an aside. It doesn't disrupt or altar the syntax structure. And numerous similar examples could be found in EModE texts. That it is an independent clause that doesn't altar the structure can be readily seen if we remove it:

"for this cause have I been lifted up that  they may be judged according to their works."

Actually, when read in context, the statement "for this cause have I been lifted up" seems to best modify the content of the previous sentence, which is a lengthy discussion about why Christ was being lifted up. That provides an immediate semantically relevant antecedent. Then look what follows: 

therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me, that  they may be judged according to their works

This second structure is not just an interrupting "aside" as you characterized it. Nothing about it suggests that. Rather, in this context, the term "therefore" signals that a summative statement or conclusion is about to follow, and in this case it has its own new independent clause ("I will draw all men unto me") which is then followed by a semantically relevant subordinating clause ("that  they may be judged according to their works"). In this case, the subordinate clause is almost certainly intended to modify its immediately preceding independent clause, and it makes perfect semantic sense. There is no grammatical or semantic need to displace it from this location and attach it to an earlier clause. Sure, it is semantically relevant to the preceding sentence. But that isn't what it is immediately modifying. 

7 hours ago, the narrator said:

D&C 74:5

"for this cause the apostle wrote unto the church, giving unto them a commandment, not of the Lord, but of himself, that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever" (D&C 74:5)

this is fine just is. It's just that "he apostle . . . but of himself" is really long description of the thing that was done so "that a believer should not..."

In this case the subordinating clause "that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever" does not seem to modify "for this cause." Instead, it seems to clearly modify the noun "commandment." In other words "that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever" is functioning as a relative clause (describing the nature of the commandment) rather than an adverbial clause (describing why the apostle wrote to the church). Again, you will notice that "commandment" is the more immediate antecedent, and it just makes better semantic sense of the sentence. 

Just as a check on my thinking, I asked Chat-GPT what sentence elements these crucial clauses were modifying, and in both cases it verified my own interpretation. I didn't give it any leading hints to sway it either way, so it had no idea what I wanted or what I might be biased towards. Here is the first question and its immediate unmodified response:

Quote

Question

Can you help understand what the phrase "that they may be judged according to their works" is modifying in these verses: "14 And my Father sent me that I might be lifted up upon the cross; and after that I had been lifted up upon the cross, that I might draw all men unto me, that as I have been lifted up by men even so should men be lifted up by the Father, to stand before me, to be judged of their works, whether they be good or whether they be evil— 15 And for this cause have I been lifted up; therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me, that they may be judged according to their works."

Answer

In verse 15, “that they may be judged according to their works” most directly modifies the verbal idea “I will draw all men unto me.”

So the structure is:

I will draw all men unto me,
that they may be judged according to their works.

Here that introduces a purpose/result clause: Christ draws all people to himself so that they may be judged according to their works.

A simplified paraphrase would be:

I will bring all people before me in order that they may be judged according to their works.

Verse 14 gives the fuller logic:

Christ is lifted up on the cross
→ so that he may draw all people to himself
→ so that, just as he was lifted up by men, all people will be lifted up by the Father
→ to stand before Christ
→ to be judged by their works.

So in verse 15, the phrase “that they may be judged according to their works” compresses the longer sequence from verse 14. It points back especially to:

“I will draw all men unto me”

but conceptually it also echoes:

“to stand before me, to be judged of their works.”

Here is the second example:

Quote

Question:

Can you help me understand what part of speech the clause "that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever" is modifying in this statement: "for this cause the apostle wrote unto the church, giving unto them a commandment, not of the Lord, but of himself, that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever" (D&C 74:5)

Answer:

In that sentence, the clause “that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever” functions as a content clause explaining the substance of “a commandment.”

So the structure is essentially:

the apostle wrote unto the church,
giving unto them a commandment
—not of the Lord, but of himself—
that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever

The that-clause modifies or completes “commandment” by telling us what the commandment was.

Grammatically, it is not primarily modifying “wrote” or “giving.” It is attached to the noun phrase “a commandment.” In modern terms, we might paraphrase:

He gave them a commandment that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever.

Or more smoothly:

He commanded them that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever.

 

So, as I argued before, it really does seem that these constructions aren't truly analogous to what Carmack was proposing since they don't grammatically modify the key phrase "for this cause" in the way he described. Are you still so "sad" that I can't see it? I'm sure it must be devasting to your emotional psyche that I am so inept. 

Edited May 6 by Ryan Dahle

[Ryan Dahle]

10 hours ago, the narrator said:

11 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Those without linguistic competence find non-analogous counter examples and simply assume the differences don't matter that much.

Ryan, by your own admission you are without linguistic competence.

Actually, I believe I said "I'm not a trained linguist." And technically speaking I'm not (in the sense that I don't have any graduate training in this area as Carmack does). But that doesn't mean I completely lack "competence" in this area. I actually do have a bachelor's degree in English education. And I tutored for an English grammar class in college. So I'm moderately competent, but I'm not a formally trained linguist. I would say I'm competent enough to sometimes clearly identify the incompetence of those who make arguments against the research that Carmack is producing. But I'm definitely not on his level. And clearly neither are you.

[Ryan Dahle]

8 hours ago, the narrator said:

8 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

By way of analogy, when Yoda says "powerful you have become," that sentence has the same semantic meaning as "you have become powerful." It is the same set of words and they share the same grammatical relationships. However, each sentence has a different syntactic order or structure.

You must be really bad at logic and analogies. This is not analogous at all. You are literally changing the order of the syntax here:

"powerful you have become" A B C D

"you have become powerful ." B C D A

On the other hand, every single one of my examples had each part of their syntax in the exact same order.

Ryan, do you even know what an analogy is?

Yes, I believe I know what an analogy is. But you have to realize that every time you provide examples where the key subordinating clause formula (that X may/might [not] <infinitive.phrase) is displaced from the phrase "for this cause" you are inserting something else in its place. In other words, the key clause swaps places with the intervening construction. And that, of course, obviously counts as a reordering of syntax, especially if there is a statistical disparity between adjacent usage and displaced usage. Let's just compare two examples: 

• for this cause that he might not bring upon him injustice, he would not fall upon the Lamanites and destroy them in their drunkenness (Alma 55:19) A B C
• for this cause God will send them strong delusions, that they may believe a lie and be damned (Letter to editor in Times and Seasons) A C B

Do you recognize that that these constructions do not have the same syntactic order? Do you not see how the key subordinate clause has swapped places with the independent clause? Do you not realize that English speakers and writers often have varying proclivities for certain types of syntactic ordering, and that some types of constructions are far more prevalent at certain times and places than others? Yes, the grammatical relationship is the same, but that is also true of the Yoda example. The point is that you can't just change the syntax (in this case by allowing intervening content) and assume it doesn't make a difference. It often does, and in this case comparable 19th century examples seem to be rarer when the subordinate clause immediately follows the "for this cause" phrase.

And, yes, I think using the example of Yoda's speech provided a decent analogy. It presented a type of syntactic reordering that was similar to but not precisely the same as the examples you had brought up in comparison to the Book of Mormon. They were similar in the sense that crucial syntactic swapping occurs in both sets of examples. They are different as to the specific nature of the swapping (in that the Yoda example involves the displacement of a subjective complement whereas the examples relevant to our discussion involve the displacement of a particular type of subordinate clause). 

Edited May 6 by Ryan Dahle

[Ryan Dahle]

11 hours ago, the narrator said:

Beside innumerable examples that were republished during this time, here are some new passages contemporary to the time:

Sure:

"For this cause, that ye, who must lament The death of those that made this world so fair, Cannot recall them now" (from the 1818 poem, The Revolt of Islam, by Percy Bysshe Shelley).

"for this cause That He whose sov reign will none dares contest Forbids that I rebellious as I was to His city any soul should lead" (poem by JFW Herschell (1792-1871)

"for this cause , that would not have been the case" (Report from the Select Committee on the Employment of the Poor in Ireland Ordered by the House of Commons, to be Printed, 16 July, 1823)

Those I found from a quick search while making sure they weren't from one of the many dozens of books reprinted at this time from earlier periods.

So, I followed up on these examples and read them in context. I believe the first two are legitimately similar to certain BofM examples, namely 1 Nephi 4:17 and 1 Nephi 4:36. I don't think the third example is legitimately similar. But now we are at least getting somewhere. These are the types of finds that I find more meaningful, not mere speculation about how anything and everything can be explained by Smith's assumed idiolectic proclivities. 

On the other hand, after re-reading Carmack's original claim and observing his clarifying comments in this thread, his argument was not that this archaic feature was strictly absent in 19th century texts (he never claimed that). It was that it has an unusually high frequency inn the BofM and that the texts that best match it in frequency are from the early modern period. And, no, in case you are wondering, this isn't shifting the goal posts. Again, for reference, here was the initial claim from Carmack's article: 

Quote

English from the end of the sixteenth century ought to be of interest to readers of the Book of Mormon since the text has a substantial amount of syntactic usage that was most prevalent in the history of the language around this time. One example that has received little or no attention is this phraseology: “for this cause that he might not bring upon him injustice” (Alma 55:19; general case: “for this cause that X may/might (not) <infinitive.phrase>.”) The noun cause conveys an archaic meaning of purpose in these. The Book of Mormon has seven instances,³⁶ which is a high level of usage and a historical outlier. Only two texts have been found to have more, both published in the 1580s and both translations of Calvin.³⁷ Among early modern texts with at least two instances of this syntax, the Book of Mormon ranks seventh in per-word usage, right between these two Calvin translations. In intensity, these texts rank higher.

These two linguistic features of the text are examples of many similar items found in the Book of Mormon. The number of outliers makes it a statistically weak claim that Joseph Smith accidentally or deliberately expanded rare and obsolete English usage in dozens of different ways.

So, when read in context, your examples are helpful and a good start, but they aren't yet sufficient to counteract the specific details of Carmack's original claim. So, let's take the next step. Now that you have found a couple legitimate examples, can you find 19th century texts with a similar usage rate of this feature? 

Edited May 6 by Ryan Dahle

[champatsch]

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.

Edited May 6 by champatsch

[champatsch]

    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.

[champatsch]

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.

[the narrator]

12 hours ago, champatsch said:

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).

Stan, my man. You just keep revealing the silliness of your methodology and the absurdity of your appeal to statistics--something that I, a non-linguist, am quite sure no other linguists in your field would approve of. Earlier you made a big deal about a particular "for this cause that..." syntax appearing SEVEN TIMES, and you emphasized that as if it were truly important (which it is not, at least in the way you want to make it to be). And now here you are insistent that something only showing up ONE TIME is a very important thing that MUST be explained or else Stan Carmack is triumphant and the Book of Mormon must have been partly worded for some unexplainable reason by some native EModE speaker and thus THE BOOK OF MORMON IS TRUE!!!!!

Well, no, nobody has to explain it. As I noted before, the only real importance of the previous example showing up 7 (or really rather like 15) times is that it shows that it is very likely not an aberration by the speaker. Your single "but if" could very well just be that--a speaking mistake, brain fart, scribal error, etc. Sheesh, we don't even have the original manuscript to look at.

I'm guessing that one reason you are insistent that this must all be intentional EModE is because you are beginning with a premise that 100% of the Book of Mormon text spoken by Joseph must perfectly match a text perfectly prepared by God and His angels that was given him. And with that premise you want to circle back and conclude with it.

 

13 hours ago, champatsch said:

Davis's approach in his paper for such things is either to ignore them

Right, because he doesn't have to. It's not the duty of a linguist to look at EVERY SINGLE EXAMPLE of some grammarian's attempt to label what he thinks must be an example of intentional use of language. Rather their duty is to try to understand how language is being used and why it is being used some way. You aren't doing that. You are just labeling syntax structures and insisting that they must all come from someone (or multiple persons) who is using correct syntax, with some using correct EModE syntax in some places and others using correct later English syntax in most of the text. In doing do, you completely ignore the linguist's duty to try to understand and explain why they appear as they do. Davis, on the other hand, is doing that. He is looking at the evidence and showing, through examples, how they could be explained.

Again, he doesn't need to explain each and everything thing. For some silly reason, you seem to think that if there remains one example that Davis cannot today explain then it could never be explained and that one single thing must then prove your demand that it be evidence of a native EModE speaker doing some part of the translation. That's not how it works.

13 hours ago, champatsch said:

or to call them a mistake by Joseph Smith

Well that is a very real possibility, especially for something that only occurs once. However, even it appears a hundred times, it could still be a mistake. In a recent episode of The Boys, the character The Deep says "It's a doggy-dog world." Clearly a mistake. However, if doesn't realize he's saying the wrong thing he could be repeating it over and over. Him saying it a thousand times over a few years doesn't make it any less of a mistake. This is pretty normal, most everyone has phrases they repeat wrong. I said "buttload" for years as a kid, teen, and young adult before I learned it was supposed to be "boatload," but I still use "buttload" in honor of Nacho Libre.

13 hours ago, champatsch said:

or to mis-analyze the lexical usage

I'm sure he can make mistakes, just as you make silly mistake and leaps in logic. He's a big boy though, and I'm sure like an actual scholar he will adjust accordingly when shown wrong.

 

13 hours ago, champatsch said:

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.

You are too stuck on Davis's use of Bunyan. Nowhere does Davis claim that Bunyan must be the source for anything. Nowhere does he even claim that Joseph read Bunyan. Rather, Davis simply points to Bunyan as one example of the many, many, many books in publication at the time--most of which are no longer in existence-- that a reader's own linguistic registers could be informed by, and how that could result in them constructing EModE-looking phrases without being an EModE-speaker.

[the narrator]

9 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Actually, when read in context, the statement "for this cause have I been lifted up" seems to best modify the content of the previous sentence, which is a lengthy discussion about why Christ was being lifted up. That provides an immediate semantically relevant antecedent. Then look what follows: 

therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me, that  they may be judged according to their works

This second structure is not just an interrupting "aside" as you characterized it. Nothing about it suggests that. Rather, in this context, the term "therefore" signals that a summative statement or conclusion is about to follow, and in this case it has its own new independent clause ("I will draw all men unto me") which is then followed by a semantically relevant subordinating clause ("that  they may be judged according to their works"). In this case, the subordinate clause is almost certainly intended to modify its immediately preceding independent clause, and it makes perfect semantic sense.

Sorry, you're wrong. Let's break it down.

"for this cause have I been lifted up; therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me, that  they may be judged according to their works."

If we remove the clause (have I been lifted up; therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me) entire we get this:

"for this cause (purpose/reasons) that  they may be judged according to their works." (which loses no meaning and matches Carmack's arbitrarily narrow syntax)

Now, "have I been lifted up" is simply explaining what the thing done was (as also explained in the preceding context), and we could return it and see the exact same structure as in the other examples I gave:

"for this cause have I been lifted up;  that  they may be judged according to their works."

Now, as Brant Gardner and others have shown (if you haven't read Brant's Engraven upon Plates, Printed upon Paper, you really should), there are instances throughout the text where the speaker (or engraver) throws in clarifying information mid-sentence. It's incredibly common in oral speaking if the speaker needs to recover a line of thought, ensure they didn't forget something, etc.

You correctly note that the previous sentence provides a lengthy discussion about why Christ was lifted up, but you don't seem to note that the two sentences essentially repeat portions of themselves, the difference being the previous verse is explaining what the Father did: he "sent" Jesus ("And my Father sent me that I might be lifted up upon the cross") and the second is explaining why Jesus did what he did: why he was "lifted up" ("for this cause have I been lifted up"), and in both instances the passages provide an explanation of the function (not purpose) of the cross (to "draw all men unto me" by the power of the Father). And so here we can see that the explanation of the function of the cross in vs. 14 ("that I might draw all men unto me, that as I have been lifted up by men even so should men be lifted up by the Father,") being repeated in vs 15 ("therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me"). If we restore that, we can see that the meaning and syntax structure remains:

"for this cause have I been lifted up; therefore, according to the power of the Father I will draw all men unto me, that  they may be judged according to their works."

 

9 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

There is no grammatical or semantic need to displace it from this location and attach it to an earlier clause. Sure, it is semantically relevant to the preceding sentence. But that isn't what it is immediately modifying. 

Well good, cuz nothing was displaced and attached. Somethings were just repeated.

9 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

In this case the subordinating clause "that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever" does not seem to modify "for this cause."

That is because the clause modifying "for this cause" is "the apostle wrote unto the church, giving unto them a commandment, not of the Lord, but of himself." The latter is modifying or defining the "cause" (noun, the thing being done). I have repeatedly noted that in each example I provided that the passage in bold blue italics was explaining the thing that was done. Let's break this down again:

"for this cause the apostle wrote unto the church, giving unto them a commandment, not of the Lord, but of himself, that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever" (D&C 74:5)

If we remove that clause we get:

""for this cause that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever" (D&C 74:5)"

IOW, the thing done was done so "that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever". What was the thing done? The thing done was "the apostle wrote unto the church". If we returned this to the sentence we get:

"for this cause the apostle wrote unto the church that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever"

IOW, the apostle wrote unto the church with the purpose of ensuring "that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever". Explaining the importance of the apostle writing, the clause "giving unto them a commandment, not of the Lord, but of himself," modifies "the apostle wrote unto the church"--IOW, it is saying the apostle's writing was authoritative. Now, we can return that to the sentence and see how the syntax structure remains:

"for this cause the apostle wrote unto the church, giving unto them a commandment, not of the Lord, but of himself, that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever" (D&C 74:5)

 

9 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Just as a check on my thinking, I asked Chat-GPT what sentence elements these crucial clauses were modifying

I don't care what AI thinks. These are convoluted sentences lacking clear punctuation and levels of subordinate clauses that would put Germanic continental philosophers to shame, leaving AI with so much guesswork of where even to begin.

 

[the narrator]

9 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Actually, I believe I said "I'm not a trained linguist." And technically speaking I'm not (in the sense that I don't have any graduate training in this area as Carmack does). But that doesn't mean I completely lack "competence" in this area. I actually do have a bachelor's degree in English education. And I tutored for an English grammar class in college.

So you have training in modern English grammar. Congratulations.

[champatsch]

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.

[champatsch]

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.

Edited May 6 by champatsch

[the narrator]

9 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Yes, I believe I know what an analogy is.

Then why would you counter that with such a bad analogy?

9 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

But you have to realize that every time you provide examples where the key subordinating clause formula (that X may/might [not] <infinitive.phrase) is displaced from the phrase "for this cause" you are inserting something else in its place.

Nope. I did not "insert something else in its place." In every example I provided  EVERY PART OF THE SYNTAX STRUCTURE IS STILL THERE AND IN THE SAME ORDER.

 

9 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

In other words, the key clause swaps places with the intervening construction.

Nope. Nothing was swapped.

9 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Let's just compare two examples: 

• for this cause that he might not bring upon him injustice, he would not fall upon the Lamanites and destroy them in their drunkenness (Alma 55:19) A B C
• for this cause God will send them strong delusions, that they may believe a lie and be damned (Letter to editor in Times and Seasons) A C B

Do you recognize that that these constructions do not have the same syntactic order?

Do you not recognize that the bold red text are subordinate independent clauses not included in Carmack's narrow structure? Let's break these down:

This is the arbitrarily narrow structure that Carmack provides:

for this cause that X may/might (not) <infinitive.phrase>

if we color code your examples accordingly, they would look like:

• for this cause that he might not bring upon him injustice, he would not fall upon the Lamanites and destroy them in their drunkenness (Alma 55:19) 
• for this cause God will send them strong delusions, that they may believe a lie and be damned (Letter to editor in Times and Seasons) 

now, as noted, the bold italicized blue text are independent clauses not included in Carmack's narrow structure. If we remove those so just the text in Carmack's structure remain, we will see that for both EVERY PART OF THE SYNTAX STRUCTURE IS STILL THERE AND IN THE SAME ORDER because their inclusions does not change the basic syntax. As someone with some college education in grammar you should be able to understand this:

• for this cause that he might not bring upon him injustice 
• for this cause  that they may believe a lie and be damned 

9 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Do you not see how the key subordinate clause has swapped places with the independent clause?

Do you not see how they are subordinate clauses that aren't part of Carmack's narrow structure? Do you not see how you are labeling these "key" for some weird reason you haven't provided, when those "key" phrases could be removed and the sentences still be complete and where EVERY PART OF THE SYNTAX STRUCTURE IS STILL THERE AND IN THE SAME ORDER? Do you not see how similar subordinate clauses are used all over the place in publications published in the 17the century? Do you not see how included subordinate clauses changes nothing here?

9 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Do you not realize that English speakers and writers often have varying proclivities for certain types of syntactic ordering, and that some types of constructions are far more prevalent at certain times and places than others?

DO YOU NOT SEE THAT THIS IS THE EXACT THING GOING ON IN THE BOOK OF MORMON AND VIRTUALLY ALL TEXTS, INCLUDING THOSE WRITTEN IN EMODE, WHERE SOMETIMES THE AUTHOR OR SPEAKER PHRASES THINGS IN SOME PLACES DIFFERENTLY THAN IN OTHER PLACES?

9 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Yes, the grammatical relationship is the same, but that is also true of the Yoda example.

No, in all of my examples the key parts of Carmack's structure were all there and in the same order. Your yoda example moves around a key part of the sentence that cannot be removed without the sentence becoming ungrammatical:

"powerful you have become" A B C D

"you have become powerful ." B C D A

If you remove "powerful " each sentence becomes incomplete and meaningless: "you have become". On the other hand, in every single one of my examples if you were to remove the independent clause in blue bold italics, each still remains a complete sentence with EVERY PART OF THE SYNTAX STRUCTURE IS STILL THERE AND IN THE SAME ORDER:

 

"for this cause that  they may be judged according to their works. (3 Ne. 27:15)

"for this cause that ye should be preserved" (Mosiah 7:11)

"for this cause  that  these things which I write shall be kept and preserved, and handed down unto my seed, from generation to generation, that the promise may be fulfilled unto Joseph" (2 Ne. 25:21)

"for this cause that the Gentiles repent and come unto me and be baptized in my name and know of the true points of my doctrine (3 Ne. 21:6; note here that Joseph begins "for the cause that the Gentiles... but then interrupts his speaking to add the condition, and then picks back up by repeating "that they")

"for this cause that ye may know that ye must all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ" (Morm. 3:20; here, everything after the initial "ye may" could be read as an extended infinite phrase)

"for this cause that  ye might know the gate by which ye should enter." (2 Ne. 31:17)

"for this cause that they should not come unto the world"

And here are the relevant passages from Joseph's writing and other contemporaneous Mormon writings, color coded just for you:

"for this cause  that you might be obedient" (D&C 58:6)

"for this cause that you should call your solemn assemblies assembly" (D&C 95:7)

"for this cause  that a believer should not be united to an unbeliever" (D&C 74:5)

"for this cause that he should build a tabernacle, that they should bear it with them in the wilderness, and to build a house in the land of promise, that those ordinances might be revealed which had been hid from before the world was." (D&C 124:38)

"for this cause that he might preprare you for a grateer [greater] work that  you might be prepared for the endowment from on high" (letter to church leaders)

"for this cause,  that the scene of wretchedness may ce[a]se in the world" (letter to Don Carlos Smith from Sidney Rigdon)

"for this cause that ye should go to the Ohio" (Letter from Phelps, likely paraphrasing D&C 38:32)

"for this cause that my servant Isaac may not be tempted above that which he is able to bear" (D&C 64:19-20)

"for this cause that thou mayest be planted in the land of thine inheritance" (D&C 55:5)

"for this cause that they should be cut off from among the people. (D&C 133:63-64; this long clause is clearer in revelations when it isn't split between verses)

"for this cause that  they may believe a lie and be damned" (letter to editor in Times and Seasons)

8 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

So, let's take the next step. Now that you have found a couple legitimate examples, can you find 19th century texts with a similar usage rate of this feature? 

Again, I don't need to. People are individuals with individual brains and their own individual ways of speaking. We pick up our ways of speaking and the word we use from a myriad of places. We often make up our own ways of speaking by mixing together phrases we've encountered, mishearing things, misremembering things, making error and repeating them, and sometimes just being creative. Furthermore, we only have access to a small fraction of books, newspapers, and other materials that were contemporaneous to Joseph.

This whole methodology of pointing to a particular phrase (especially isolated ones), demanding that it be intentionally composed EModE, and then demanding that it could only exist through repetition by one who is either natively speaking EModE or perfectly replicating EModE that they have encountered is utter rubbish. Each of those is not participating in scholarly linguistics.

The role of a linguist is to look at the examples and try to understand how they might occur. That is what Davis is doing. He is showing that these could readily and understandably appear without a person knowing EModE or even encountering it. He doesn't provide, nor does he claim to provide, a one-size-fits all methodology. Because that would be stupid. Language doesn't work like that. Nor does he need to explain today (or ever) each example. All he is doing, and as a linguist should do, is look at the evidence and point out some ways in which these could be explained and that implicitly others others could be explained by the same, similar, or different ways--that we need not simply throw our hands in the air and declare God as the reason.

[the narrator]

3 hours ago, champatsch said:

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

It doesn't need to prove or show anything. As a linguist you should know that very little, if anything, could be proven. However, those examples show that Joseph could have worded the syntax, and if he could have then by logical necessity it isn't the case that Joseph must not have.

3 hours ago, champatsch said:

Consider again the very weak, one-sided claim of Bunyanesque influence on Joseph Smith wording the Book of Mormon

Stan, my man, stop with the strawmen. Davis never claimed a "Bunyanesque influence on Joseph Smith wording the Book of Mormon." He simply provided Bunyan as one example of the myriad of publications available to Joseph, and how such publications could provide Joseph with words, phrases, ideas, etc that for his register that Joseph could then use, adapt, misuse, etc. Your focus and emphasis on Bunyan goes well beyond what Davis is doing. So no point in replying to the rest of your strawman here.

[the narrator]

2 hours ago, champatsch said:

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.

More obsession over a strawman here.

[the narrator]

2 hours ago, champatsch said:

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.

Well I certainly hope you actually respond to his arguments. I also hope that you rescind your lie about Davis's article having multiple authors or having help from colleagues.

Seriously, why would you lie about that, Stan? 2 Ne. 9:34 has a warning for you, buddy.

2 hours ago, champatsch said:

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.

This is another example of your absurd methodology (if it could even be counted as such). You here insist that "extinct" has a very specific definition and usage and then demand that others accept this premise. As a trained linguist (as you really love reminding people of), you should know that this is not how language works. Davis doesn't need to show examples of the term with your very specific uses. He is simply showing how Bunyan is an example of a text that Joseph could have acquired a usage that he applied in the Book of Mormon. While you may be unhappy that it doesn't live up to your predetermined EModE usage, Bunyan's usage of "extinct" works just as well in Alma 44:7.

2 hours ago, champatsch said:

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)

You should read Mosiah 27:22:

Quote

And he caused that the priests should assemble themselves together; and they began to fast, and to pray to the Lord their God that he would open the mouth of Alma, that he might speak, and also that his limbs might receive their strength—that the eyes of the people might be opened to see and know of the goodness and glory of God.

Here, the text says that Alma1 wanted the "priests [to] assemble themselves together . . . to fast, and to pray to the Lord their God" so that God "would open the mouth of Alma, that he might speak "and also that his limbs might receive their strength" so "that the eyes of the people might be opened to see and know of the goodness and glory of God." In other words, the text explicitly says that a purpose/cause of the priests praying was so that people could see it and that it would be a sign "of the goodness and glory of God."

So here, Mosiah 27:22 explicitly states that Alma2 standing would testify of the goodness of God. With that in mind, reread Alma 36:23:

Quote

But behold, my limbs did receive their strength again, and I stood upon my feet, and did manifest unto the people that I had been born of God.

Just as Alma1 desired, Alma2's limbs receiving strength "did manifest unto the people that I had been born of God." If that reading is insufficient to you, that's your problem.

I wish my autistic brain wouldn't get fixated on addressing each of your poor arguments, but I have to be strong and spend my time better.

But one last thing, why did you lie about Davis's article having multiple authors? Are you simply repeating a lie someone else told you? Or did you come up with the lie yourself?

Edited May 6 by the narrator

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

Now, as Brant Gardner and others have shown (if you haven't read Brant's Engraven upon Plates, Printed upon Paper, you really should), there are instances throughout the text where the speaker (or engraver) throws in clarifying information mid-sentence. It's incredibly common in oral speaking if the speaker needs to recover a line of thought, ensure they didn't forget something, etc.

Yes. I'm well aware of the many asides and seeming extemporaneous changes in the Book of Mormon. But, grammatically speaking, this does not appear to be one of them. It doesn't read like an aside. It reads like a summative statement (hence the "therefore") reaffirming the content of the previous statement. I find it interesting that Chat-GPT immediately reaffirmed my own reading. It is the common-sense interpretation of the passage. There is nothing about the phrase that signals an aside or interruption of thought. Also, I'm guessing you are conceding the point about the other construction (in D&C 74), since you never responded to it. If so, I'm glad it may reduce, to some extent, how "sad" you feel for me. 

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

11 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Let's just compare two examples: 

• for this cause that he might not bring upon him injustice, he would not fall upon the Lamanites and destroy them in their drunkenness (Alma 55:19) A B C
• for this cause God will send them strong delusions, that they may believe a lie and be damned (Letter to editor in Times and Seasons) A C B

Do you recognize that that these constructions do not have the same syntactic order?

Do you not recognize that the bold red text are subordinate independent clauses not included in Carmack's narrow structure? 

Of course I realize that. Concerning your proposed examples, my point was never that the components identified by Carmack were sequentially out of order in relation to themselves (when viewing them in isolation outside of their contextual placement in the rest of the sentence). My point was that when you insert intervening content, it changes the syntactic order of the sentence as a whole, and it disrupts the proposed syntactic arrangement. Since those types of insertions rearrange the structure of the sentence, they can definitely make a difference in frequency rates (since English speakers and writers tend to prefer certain types of syntactic arrangements over others in various contexts). You can't just throw in an intervening independent clause or other features and assume it won't affect frequency. And Carmack's whole point was about rarity, so it matters to look at instances that are precisely similar to what he proposed. 

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

DO YOU NOT SEE THAT THIS IS THE EXACT THING GOING ON IN THE BOOK OF MORMON AND VIRTUALLY ALL TEXTS, INCLUDING THOSE WRITTEN IN EMODE, WHERE SOMETIMES THE AUTHOR OR SPEAKER PHRASES THINGS IN SOME PLACES DIFFERENTLY THAN IN OTHER PLACES?

Yes, I realize that most texts have natural variations in usage. But I also realize that the specific types and patterns of variations we can expect from any given speaker or writer is typically constrained to a large degree by his or her linguistic environment. In other words, one can look at the normative patterns of variation in different contexts (spoken vs. written language; different genres of texts; etc.) in a given linguistic milieu and then make reasonable probability estimates about what types of patterns any given speaker/writer in that milieu would be likely to exhibit in comparable contexts. But you can't just argue that since speakers are known to vary in their use of certain items of lexis, grammar, and syntax then all variations are equally likely to be produced by the speaker and any variations at all can easily be explained by the simple fact that variation exists as a general principle of language. 

Edited May 6 by Ryan Dahle

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, the narrator said:

10 hours ago, Ryan Dahle said:

So, let's take the next step. Now that you have found a couple legitimate examples, can you find 19th century texts with a similar usage rate of this feature? 

Again, I don't need to. People are individuals with individual brains and their own individual ways of speaking.

In other words, you probably just can't do it, because the data isn't there to support an alternative claim. Whenever Carmack's assertions about rarity or obsolescence turn out to be fundamentally accurate, then there will inevitably be a pivot like this--away from the implications of the data and towards some superficial, overly reductive, or high-level linguistic principle or theory that doesn't actually deal with the cumulative statistical unlikelihood of Smith producing the text. 

Edited May 6 by Ryan Dahle