churchistrue Posted October 17, 2016 Author Posted October 17, 2016 What are all the important Book of Mormon computer text studies that should be read to understand the progress in this field?
James Tunney Posted October 17, 2016 Posted October 17, 2016 2 hours ago, Brant Gardner said: I get the impression you have read a lot more critical arguments than of the actual issues. In this case, you have trotted out the "vetted in a peer reviewed journal" without having any idea whether it is relevant. First, early modern English is certainly a well accepted discussion in linguistic history, and the topic is easily available in non-LDS peer reviewed journals. Secondly, the application of the information to the Book of Mormon is non-controversial. It is descriptive, not interpretive. "Has a non-Mormon linguist confirmed it?" That question, by itself, shows that you have no clue what the issue is or what the data represent. Again, the data are descriptive. If you took that information to any linguist familiar with, in this case, the grammar of early modern English, they would recognize the presence of the older forms. The data are clear, and actually pretty uncontroversial. The interpretation of what it means can be controversial, and you might notice that I disagree with that interpretation. However, the data are clear and your question simply repeating issues that keep getting repeated--and in this case, are completely irrelevant to the issue you are trying to use them against. What about early modern english being in Joseph Smith's environment? Why would God have it in there if he wanted to communicate the best way he could, his gospel to his children? Wouldn't it have been better to have more modern, grammar mistake-free english come out of the magic seer stone instead of what actually did? This seems like a theory born from dissonance reduction.
champatsch Posted October 17, 2016 Posted October 17, 2016 churchistrue: Have you read the nearest shrunken centroid article and the response? Tunney: What is "mistake-free English"? Your English? Sounds like you might be hung up on the form of things rather than the substance. (Ether 12:25–26) Thou hast also made our words powerful and great, even that we cannot write them. Wherefore when we write, we behold our weakness and stumble because of the placing of our words. And I fear lest the Gentiles shall mock at our words. And when I had said this, the Lord spake unto me, saying: Fools mock, but they shall mourn. And my grace is sufficient for the meek, that they shall take no advantage of your weakness. When you consider a large amount of BofM linguistic evidence, which you probably haven't done, then it becomes clear that the combination of so many archaisms found in the BofM was highly unlikely to have been in Joseph Smith's dialect. 1
James Tunney Posted October 17, 2016 Posted October 17, 2016 12 minutes ago, champatsch said: churchistrue: Have you read the nearest shrunken centroid article and the response? Tunney: What is "mistake-free English"? Your English? Sounds like you might be hung up on the form of things rather than the substance. (Ether 12:25–26) Thou hast also made our words powerful and great, even that we cannot write them. Wherefore when we write, we behold our weakness and stumble because of the placing of our words. And I fear lest the Gentiles shall mock at our words. And when I had said this, the Lord spake unto me, saying: Fools mock, but they shall mourn. And my grace is sufficient for the meek, that they shall take no advantage of your weakness. When you consider a large amount of BofM linguistic evidence, which you probably haven't done, then it becomes clear that the combination of so many archaisms found in the BofM was highly unlikely to have been in Joseph Smith's dialect. My point is that the early modern english theory is used to shore up the tight translation theory and I think it fails in doing so. Personally, I think the book of mormon is fictional and comes from the 19th century.
champatsch Posted October 17, 2016 Posted October 17, 2016 Sounds like you're ideologically driven with respect to this issue. I've considered a huge amount of linguistic evidence and have concluded that it would have been very difficult for an English philologist in the early 19th century to have produced the form and structure and semantics of the BofM, abstracting away from its complex content. And so that makes it virtually impossible for Joseph Smith to have produced the linguistics forms, the syntactic structures, and the archaic vocabulary. To clarify, the earliest text of the BofM contains a combination of a very large number of non-KJV and KJV archaisms, and all that leads me to the above conclusions. 1
cdowis Posted October 17, 2016 Posted October 17, 2016 (edited) 32 minutes ago, James Tunney said: My point is that the early modern english theory is used to shore up the tight translation theory and I think it fails in doing so. Personally, I think the book of mormon is fictional and comes from the 19th century. I think your theory fails to explain the "non-19th century" aspects in this book. Specifically if you are LOOKING for 19th century, you will find it. But If you change your viewpoint that it is a product of the 20th century, you will ALSO find that == the blood oaths of the Mafia, the Talaban terrorists hiding in the mountains of Pakistan, the referencs to Darwinism, TV preachers, etc If you look strictly from a textual analysis, (ignoring the historical) I concluded that it was obviously written in the 20th Century. Edited October 17, 2016 by cdowis
churchistrue Posted October 17, 2016 Author Posted October 17, 2016 Here's my first shot at providing some interesting views of the data, in terms of distribution of some words and phrases. http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/book-of-mormon-wordprint-analysis/ This is obviously just the work of a hobbyist and needs to be verified with statistical tests, but I think it visually illustrates some of the arguments that have been floating around for a while. And also shows some new phrases and words I haven't seen talked about before. 2
champatsch Posted October 17, 2016 Posted October 17, 2016 Did you use the earliest text to make this analysis? If not, then it will be quite inaccurate for certain things like has. Also, wherefore can mean "and therefore" and is also used interrogatively. Wherefore ~ therefore variation in the BofM is therefore a complex matter that has not been accurately studied by anyone. Also, "did infinitive" is not Old English. It's not Middle English. It's Early Modern English, 16th century mainly, but also to be found in the 17th century. Also, one simple, dry detail that shows that the BofM is a true eModE text, and not a pseudo-biblical text authored by Joseph Smith, is the use of the three highest frequency words the, and, of. The 16th and 17th centuries are the, and, of. By the 18th century the relative positions of and and of have switched, so that later writings use these words in the order the, of, and. The Late War and The American Revolution are the, of, and. A modern linguistic fingerprint. James Fenimore Cooper (early 19c American) is the, of, to, and. Walter Scott (early 19c British) is the, of, and, to. Henry Fielding (18c) is the, to, of, and. Samuel Pepys (17c) was the, and, to, of. An early modern linguistic fingerprint. Joseph Smith did a superbly archaic job dictating the BofM in dozens of ways. You can go on thinking what you want, but you do it without studying the linguistics, and Greg Prince does it without studying the linguistics, and virtually everyone has done it without studying the linguistics. What presumption, and it does go on, and will go on, apparently. 1
churchistrue Posted October 17, 2016 Author Posted October 17, 2016 6 minutes ago, champatsch said: Did you use the earliest text to make this analysis? If not, then it will be quite inaccurate for certain things like has. Also, wherefore can mean "and therefore" and is also used interrogatively. Wherefore ~ therefore variation in the BofM is therefore a complex matter that has not been accurately studied by anyone. Also, "did infinitive" is not Old English. It's not Middle English. It's Early Modern English, 16th century mainly, but also to be found in the 17th century. Also, one simple, dry detail that shows that the BofM is a true eModE text, and not a pseudo-biblical text authored by Joseph Smith, is the use of the three highest frequency words the, and, of. The 16th and 17th centuries are the, and, of. By the 18th century the relative positions of and and of have switched, so that later writings use these words in the order the, of, and. The Late War and The American Revolution are the, of, and. A modern linguistic fingerprint. James Fenimore Cooper (early 19c American) is the, of, to, and. Walter Scott (early 19c British) is the, of, and, to. Henry Fielding (18c) is the, to, of, and. Samuel Pepys (17c) was the, and, to, of. An early modern linguistic fingerprint. Joseph Smith did a superbly archaic job dictating the BofM in dozens of ways. You can go on thinking what you want, but you do it without studying the linguistics, and Greg Prince does it without studying the linguistics, and virtually everyone has done it without studying the linguistics. What presumption, and it does go on, and will go on, apparently. Thanks for feedback. I used the current text of the BOM. Would be more valuable to go back to original, I'm sure. I just did a quick and dirty based on data I had available. Is the original text available in downloadable form? I'm aware of those arguments about mimicking the ancient style.
churchistrue Posted October 17, 2016 Author Posted October 17, 2016 15 minutes ago, champatsch said: Did you use the earliest text to make this analysis? If not, then it will be quite inaccurate for certain things like has. Also, wherefore can mean "and therefore" and is also used interrogatively. Wherefore ~ therefore variation in the BofM is therefore a complex matter that has not been accurately studied by anyone. Also, "did infinitive" is not Old English. It's not Middle English. It's Early Modern English, 16th century mainly, but also to be found in the 17th century. Also, one simple, dry detail that shows that the BofM is a true eModE text, and not a pseudo-biblical text authored by Joseph Smith, is the use of the three highest frequency words the, and, of. The 16th and 17th centuries are the, and, of. By the 18th century the relative positions of and and of have switched, so that later writings use these words in the order the, of, and. The Late War and The American Revolution are the, of, and. A modern linguistic fingerprint. James Fenimore Cooper (early 19c American) is the, of, to, and. Walter Scott (early 19c British) is the, of, and, to. Henry Fielding (18c) is the, to, of, and. Samuel Pepys (17c) was the, and, to, of. An early modern linguistic fingerprint. Joseph Smith did a superbly archaic job dictating the BofM in dozens of ways. You can go on thinking what you want, but you do it without studying the linguistics, and Greg Prince does it without studying the linguistics, and virtually everyone has done it without studying the linguistics. What presumption, and it does go on, and will go on, apparently. Stanford, I didn't realize who I was talking to, until I went back and read a few of your posts. What do you think of the last two charts there, which reference your work. I had a theory that the "EmodE" portions you and Dr. Skousen are researching might have a higher frequency in certain portion. I intially theorized the Mos-Alma portion which seems to be the "purest" of the large plates portion, but it appears based on the two examples from my "quick and dirty" analysis that they are lowest in that portion and jump up starting with Helaman and are strongest in the Helaman to 3 Ne 11 portion. Does this jibe with any of your findings or theories? Also, what do you think of my last comment of "more part" being used inconsistently in the first instance of it in the small plates. Am I on or off track with that? Additionally, do you find any difference in the small vs large plates portion of the BOM translation, in terms of the research you've done on EModE?
champatsch Posted October 17, 2016 Posted October 17, 2016 A did infinitive chart will be interesting when it is compared with simple past tense usage, maybe as a running percentage, a moving average. And of course some simple past usage should be excluded like "came" in ICTP, and BE verb forms. There are concentrated doses of did infinitive in the BofM and there are slack sections. I have seen the same thing in 16c texts, for no apparent reason. Yes, those phrases are the two that have a preceding "for": "for the more part". It would be possible to set the phrase off by commas. On that reading they would be equivalent to modern "for the most part". And the "of" after the phrase could then mean 'concerning, about'. So, "And therefore these plates are, for the most part, about the ministry", etc. Excluding those two, the BofM has "the more part of X" (21 times), "a more part of X" (once), and "the more parts of X" (twice). We must go back to Holinshed's Chronicles (1577) to find a book with "the more part of X" and "the more parts of X". We must go back to Fabyan's Chronicle (1494), printed in the 1530s, to find a book with "the more part of X" and "a more part of X". 1
churchistrue Posted October 17, 2016 Author Posted October 17, 2016 (edited) 1 hour ago, champatsch said: A did infinitive chart will be interesting when it is compared with simple past tense usage, maybe as a running percentage, a moving average. And of course some simple past usage should be excluded like "came" in ICTP, and BE verb forms. There are concentrated doses of did infinitive in the BofM and there are slack sections. I have seen the same thing in 16c texts, for no apparent reason. Yes, those phrases are the two that have a preceding "for": "for the more part". It would be possible to set the phrase off by commas. On that reading they would be equivalent to modern "for the most part". And the "of" after the phrase could then mean 'concerning, about'. So, "And therefore these plates are, for the most part, about the ministry", etc. Excluding those two, the BofM has "the more part of X" (21 times), "a more part of X" (once), and "the more parts of X" (twice). We must go back to Holinshed's Chronicles (1577) to find a book with "the more part of X" and "the more parts of X". We must go back to Fabyan's Chronicle (1494), printed in the 1530s, to find a book with "the more part of X" and "a more part of X". That's pretty close to what I have. I have 23, excluding those two in 1 Ne 9: 4. Any comments on the breakout of where it occurs in the text? Have you noticed this before? Do you think it's random? Or do you have a theory for this? The categories are Mos - Alma, Helaman - 3 Ne 10, 3 Ne 11 - Mormon, Ether - Moroni, 1 Nephi 1 - 13, 1 Nephi 14 - Jacob 5, Jacob 5 - Words of Mormon. Section Words Count Usage_PerK a--Mos-Alma 115,651 3 0.03 b--Helaman 31,239 16 0.51 c--3 Nephi 11 23,715 1 0.04 d--Moroni 22,712 1 0.04 e--1 Nephi 12,533 0 - f--2 Nephi 33,727 2 0.06 g--Jacob 5 9,640 0 - And then the same chart with what I have for "did infinitive" showing again the heavy usage in the Helaman portion. Section Words Count Usage_PerK a--Mos-Alma 115,651 325 2.81 b--Helaman 31,239 226 7.23 c--3 Nephi 11 23,715 145 6.11 d--Moroni 22,712 155 6.82 e--1 Nephi 12,533 47 3.75 f--2 Nephi 33,727 107 3.17 g--Jacob 5 9,640 19 1.97 Edited October 17, 2016 by churchistrue
champatsch Posted October 17, 2016 Posted October 17, 2016 As far as the more part is concerned, EModE Bibles, for Acts 27:12, generally used "many" (see below). Coverdale used "the more part of them", and the KJV used "the more part". So you might want to go through the text and find all the instances of "many" where you think "the more part" could have been used, like (Enos 1:20) "and many of them did eat nothing save it was raw meat." Maybe this could have been "and the more part of them . . ." Clearly, Helaman's very heavy. To attempt to anser why that might be would be speculative at this point. I'll leave that up to you, since it appears to interest you. Again, you need something different from usage per thousand to be meaningful. You need a rate with "many" taken into account or a rate with almost all past tense instances taken into account, and in the latter case a moving average over 10 or more instances. What is clear is that JSJr employed the more part like a philologist. He outdid Edward Freeman, Robert Morris, and Robert Louis Stevenson, highly literate authors who used the phraseology "the more part (of X)" multiple times in the second half of the 19th century. And of course Joseph used the past tense like a number of 16c authors did. These are just two of many such details that tell one that JSJr is almost certainly not the English-language translator/author of the text. Bible Acts 19:32 Acts 27:12 1534 Tyndale ye moare parte many 1535 Coverdale the more parte the more parte off them (like the BofM!) 1537 Matthew ye moare parte many 1539 Taverner the moare parte manye 1540 Great the moare parte many 1557 Geneva the more parte many 1560 Geneva the more parte manie 1568 Bishops' the more part many 1582 Douay-Rheims the more part many 1611 King James the more part the more part 1749 Challoner-Rheims the greater part the greatest part 1
Brant Gardner Posted October 18, 2016 Posted October 18, 2016 9 hours ago, champatsch said: I've considered a huge amount of linguistic evidence and have concluded that it would have been very difficult for an English philologist in the early 19th century to have produced the form and structure and semantics of the BofM, abstracting away from its complex content. And so that makes it virtually impossible for Joseph Smith to have produced the linguistics forms, the syntactic structures, and the archaic vocabulary. First, you would be correct that it would be particularly difficult to reconstruct some of the grammatical elements. However, that is not what would be required if Joseph's dialect, being rural and therefore less affected by populated centers of learning and publication. One of the known facets of the more isolated rural communities is the longer preservation of older forms. Thus Joseph doesn't have to reconstruct, simply retain. So the issue becomes one of obsolescence. The vocabulary is problematic because there is a lot of it that can be found in printed sources that aren't that many years earlier than 1830. It is also problematic in the assumption that published sources necessarily reflect what happens in oral communities with lesser access to the published sources. Next, we have the issue of obsolete grammar. That very concept clouds the process of linguistic change. There are elements of early modern English that may be heard in modern English conversation. We consider them poor English, and often uneducated. However, that is precisely the issue. They were much more common once, and appeared in more "educated" printed material. However, the retention of those forms shifted from acceptable to unacceptable, and they became understood as poor grammar--but that doesn't make them obsolete. So, descriptively, we and analyze the presence of the forms in the Book of Mormon. It is an undemonstrated assumption that they appear there because the text was written earlier rather than written in a dialect that preserved those forms. 2
Brant Gardner Posted October 18, 2016 Posted October 18, 2016 9 hours ago, champatsch said: it becomes clear that the combination of so many archaisms found in the BofM was highly unlikely to have been in Joseph Smith's dialect. That is the essential assumption that is the question. It is highly unlikely only if it is assumed that it should be unlikely. That is not an empirical deduction from the evidence. Descriptively, it can be shown that there are many archaisms. What is much more difficult is to discover Joseph's dialect. There are multiple reasons for that, and the most important is that it is hard to find pre-1830 direct evidence for Joseph. The second is that his dialect shifted and became more standard as he was exposed to others after 1830. Some of the "ungrammatical" features that are found early disappear later--so using his later writings/dictation doesn't really get at the issue. Of course, the reason that we won't be able to get any kind of final answer is that it is so difficult to prove a negative. Demonstrating that Joseph's dialect didn't retain these elements runs into the problem of lack of data. Nevertheless, assuming that it could not have retained those features is an imposition on the data rathern than a conclusion from data. I agree, of course, that the opposite is true--assuming that it did is equally hard to demonstrate. However, there are indications in what little we have that some of the grammatical elements had to become obsolete. 3
Glenn101 Posted October 18, 2016 Posted October 18, 2016 1 hour ago, Brant Gardner said: First, you would be correct that it would be particularly difficult to reconstruct some of the grammatical elements. However, that is not what would be required if Joseph's dialect, being rural and therefore less affected by populated centers of learning and publication. One of the known facets of the more isolated rural communities is the longer preservation of older forms. Thus Joseph doesn't have to reconstruct, simply retain. So the issue becomes one of obsolescence. The vocabulary is problematic because there is a lot of it that can be found in printed sources that aren't that many years earlier than 1830. It is also problematic in the assumption that published sources necessarily reflect what happens in oral communities with lesser access to the published sources. That is why I feel that it would help to clarify the situation by researching unpublished texts such as letters and journals produced by people in Joseph Smith's environs during the periods of his formative years. Sharon, Vermont and Sharon, Connecticut from which a lot of the Sharon, Vermont settlers came were not isolated, backwoods environments. Neither was Manchester, New York and Palmyra, New York. Manchester is right on the Erie Canal, although which began construction in 1817, about the time that Joseph's family moved to the area. To establish as plausible that the Early Modern English artifacts found in the Book of Mormon but not the Bible or any known published texts probably available to Joseph Smith, one would have to explore the local dialects of those areas as expressed in the more mundane texts. At this point all we have is speculation either way. Glenn 1
Brant Gardner Posted October 18, 2016 Posted October 18, 2016 4 minutes ago, Glenn101 said: That is why I feel that it would help to clarify the situation by researching unpublished texts such as letters and journals produced by people in Joseph Smith's environs during the periods of his formative years. Sharon, Vermont and Sharon, Connecticut from which a lot of the Sharon, Vermont settlers came were not isolated, backwoods environments. Neither was Manchester, New York and Palmyra, New York. Manchester is right on the Erie Canal, although which began construction in 1817, about the time that Joseph's family moved to the area. To establish as plausible that the Early Modern English artifacts found in the Book of Mormon but not the Bible or any known published texts probably available to Joseph Smith, one would have to explore the local dialects of those areas as expressed in the more mundane texts. At this point all we have is speculation either way. Glenn I agree with you. Unfortunately, I am not in a position where I see much of that type of data.
champatsch Posted October 18, 2016 Posted October 18, 2016 5 hours ago, Brant Gardner said: One of the known facets of the more isolated rural communities is the longer preservation of older forms. Thus Joseph doesn't have to reconstruct, simply retain. I disagree based on evidence. Joseph almost certainly would have needed to recover lost forms according to your view of BofM translation. (While you already know about the following evidence, and silently dismiss it, I present it here for the sake of others and for the record.) There is of course vocabulary whose last-dated OED attestations are in the 16th century, before American colonization. Things like counsel = consult and but if = unless and depart = divide and do these things away = dismiss/ignore these things. According to the OED, Joseph would have had to reconstruct the semantic meaning of these words and phrases. And meaning is complex and shifts in meaning are unpredictable. To maintain your approach, you must therefore dismiss the authority of the OED in these four instances and in others that I have not mentioned here. You are willing to do this to maintain your view. There is also 16c did usage throughout the BofM which didn't persist in British or American dialects according to independent linguists. Here you need to dismiss studies by a number of different linguists who know nothing or very little about this BofM usage and don't mention it in their studies. You are willing to dismiss their conclusions in order to maintain your view. There is also a large amount of archaic, literate usage in the BofM that we only see systematically in a few books from hundreds of years before the BofM. The grammar is very well-formed time and time again. You are willing to dismiss this evidence to maintain your view. There is also plenty of systematic phraseology found throughout the BofM, as Skousen has pointed out more than once. There are also no contractions, which is unexpected in a dictated text of 270,000 words. There is so much more, and I'll stop with the details, since you know or should know a lot of them. The view that I think is accurate (based on a large amount of evidence) has the advantage of being plain and in line with the dictation witnesses' general perspective that words were revealed. According to them, Joseph didn't use a Bible, and sure enough BofM textual analysis of biblical passages tells us that a 1769 KJV would have been insufficient. The view that I think is inaccurate has relatively little evidentiary support and doesn't agree with the dictation witnesses and so needs much stronger support than I have ever seen or read from you and others in order to overcome the important perspective of the dictation witnesses. Even though this view is probably inaccurate, it is understandable that it is favored academically since it points to the 19th century and allows for endless nuanced argumentation and speculative research by people of many persuasions. If this view were accurate, this point wouldn't matter, but since it is probably inaccurate, this is an associated problem with the view. 1
Bob Crockett Posted October 18, 2016 Posted October 18, 2016 (edited) True stylometry (wordprint analysis) does not rely on subjective word choices or eyeballing (drawing circles around) plotted points on a chart. Edited October 18, 2016 by Bob Crockett
Brant Gardner Posted October 18, 2016 Posted October 18, 2016 4 hours ago, champatsch said: There is of course vocabulary whose last-dated OED attestations are in the 16th century, before American colonization. Things like counsel = consult and but if = unless and depart = divide and do these things away = dismiss/ignore these things. First problem is that the OED records published usage, not oral usage. As you you know, language is always changing, and what is normative is the result of settling on acceptance--usually based on communal modeling. The more a community reads, the more that what they read establishes the model. There isn't a linguistic erasure, save for time and practice. That means that the last OED record cannot be determinative evidence of the last oral usage. Take the fact that the last published usage is before colonization. That means that it was there. Say it came with some colonists--and was then retained. It isn't linguistic evidence, but a similar process for folk ballads. The Appalachians preserved old English folk ballads long after they were gone from England. Next, while the OED might list only certain dates, some of these examples are found in later printed texts. The problem with proving obsolescence is that a single later example--when found--changes the end date (again, not the same field, but he discovery of a live coelecanth effectively removed it from having gone extinct thousands of years ago). I do not dispute any of the descriptive evidence. What has not been done is to examine the question of obsolescence in relevant documentation--and part of the difficulty is that the relevant documents are less accessible. The Joseph Smith Papers are online, but even those are only helpful for the earliest dates--in which a few of the purportedly obsolete words or grammatical forms can be found. If even one, then we need to be looking at Joseph's oral dialect and not the OED. 3
cdowis Posted October 18, 2016 Posted October 18, 2016 (edited) Brant, Methinks that the Southern use of "yonder" is an example of an archaic word but in common use in certain dialects or regions. Edited October 18, 2016 by cdowis
champatsch Posted October 18, 2016 Posted October 18, 2016 7 hours ago, Brant Gardner said: The Joseph Smith Papers are online, but even those are only helpful for the earliest dates--in which a few of the purportedly obsolete words or grammatical forms can be found. If even one, then we need to be looking at Joseph's oral dialect and not the OED. I think you need to confront the strong evidence for tight control in order to strengthen the evidentially weak position of loose control. So I'm wondering what you think of the 30% did usage of the BofM? Was that Joseph Smith's dialect? Why do you think linguists have found no 18c or 19c evidence of maintenance of this quintessentially 16c phenomenon? Of course linguists do study dialects and have studied dialects in regard to this peculiarity of earlier English. Have they missed a rogue dialect so that their conclusions are wrong on this point? 1
Brant Gardner Posted October 18, 2016 Posted October 18, 2016 55 minutes ago, champatsch said: I think you need to confront the strong evidence for tight control in order to strengthen the evidentially weak position of loose control. So I'm wondering what you think of the 30% did usage of the BofM? Was that Joseph Smith's dialect? Why do you think linguists have found no 18c or 19c evidence of maintenance of this quintessentially 16c phenomenon? Of course linguists do study dialects and have studied dialects in regard to this peculiarity of earlier English. Have they missed a rogue dialect so that their conclusions are wrong on this point? The evidence for translation is quite complicated, particularly since we have a hard time getting on the same page as to what is meant by any type of translation. As long as we are wondering what to do with the evidence, what do we do with the evidence that the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible exhibits the same characteristics as the types of changes in the Isaiah chapters in the Book of Mormon? Regardless of who made the translation into English, it is clear that it wasn't a person familiar with Mormon or Moroni's culture. Looking at the issues of plate text to English, we have to find someone who was a non-native Nephite speaker (reformed Egyptian) and someone who was native English--and if we accept the evidence you are suggesting, lived in England. I also remember that during the Q&A after you and Skousen presented at FairMormon, something was said about changes that had occurred after the initial early modern English translation. I am quite curious about that, and what the evidence might have been, and who might have done it. As for what I think Joseph's dialect was, I would love to have a better empirical answer to that rather than the assumption of what it couldn't have been. 1
Robert F. Smith Posted October 19, 2016 Posted October 19, 2016 On 10/16/2016 at 10:53 PM, James Tunney said: Couldnt the Early Modern English be there because Joseph Smith wanted his invention to sound more scriptural? Also, maybe someone is seeing Early Modern English that isnt there? The burden is on you to show how the many articles published on this subject are flawed, and how Joseph Smith could have resurrected a dead language pattern. On 10/16/2016 at 10:53 PM, James Tunney said: Do you think Joseph should not have changed God to Son of God? Or Benjamin to Mosiah? If he shouldnt have changed it, why did he? The Benjamin to Mosiah had to be changed to make sense, right? What I said, James. I know of no good reason for those changes, or for the many other changes which have been made through the years. The best, most accurate edition of the Book of Mormon is Royal Skousen, ed., The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (Yale Univ., 2009). I recommend that you stop whining and get a copy.
James Tunney Posted October 19, 2016 Posted October 19, 2016 12 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said: The burden is on you to show how the many articles published on this subject are flawed, and how Joseph Smith could have resurrected a dead language pattern. What I said, James. I know of no good reason for those changes, or for the many other changes which have been made through the years. The best, most accurate edition of the Book of Mormon is Royal Skousen, ed., The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (Yale Univ., 2009). I recommend that you stop whining and get a copy. I don't know that the burden should shift when the simple conclusion is that if there is early modern english in the book of mormon, it came from a desire to make the scripture look more authentic. Also, english is a germanic language. Couldn't it be that the early modern english found is like the remnants of the older forms of german found in english? How long does an old form take to leave a language as it evolves? My understanding is that it takes a long time. This is one of the reasons why the tower of babel story is readily debunked. Also, aren't there dutch and french influences as well? So, is the book of mormon somehow true because there are remnants of older forms in english that are in the book of mormon? So, I think you are declaring too early a victory with your burden shifting claim. Benjamin to mosiah seems to be a clear error. Maybe it is like having a machine gun or an airplane appear in a supposed history about the roman siege of jerusalem in 70 a.d.? I know Fair conveniently blames it on mormon or moroni .....
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