Are cureloms imaginary?

[Honorentheos]

Quote

Seems only natural to me that people with an early 19th century biblical culture might share very similar views, and that such views would continue in that culture on into the 20th century -- all the while various headings have come and gone, the editors (who are not biblical scholars) doing the best they can to summarize the contents.  Nothing remarkable here, so move along -- unless you have a substantive observation.

So...we're in agreement the author of Ether falls into one of the following two categories? A) Person with 19th c. Biblical Christian worldview or B) Person with 20th c. Biblical Christian worldview

Since the BoM predates the 20th c., I'm pleasantly surprised to find so much agreement between us.  

Edited July 7, 2017 by Honorentheos

[Robert F. Smith]

8 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

Here are your options -

Joseph Smith attempted to make the BoM sound like it is scriptural like the Bible and written by people who used phrases that sounds like pidgined English

All books which were translations of ancient languages were placed in that same KJV style format throughout the 19th century on into the 20th.  Not just holy texts.  That was normal.  It would have been abnormal to have adopted any other style.  No form of pidgin English is involved.

8 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

The BoM was written by people who used phrases that sound like pidgined English and God gave this to Joseph Smith to put on paper through whatever process you favor (Joseph = translator, Joseph = transcriber, Joseph = vehicle for 15th c. English translators, etc., etc., etc.)

Royal Skousen & Stanford Carmack have provided definitive evidence of the Early Modern English Book of Mormon, and that Joseph only read the text off the seer stone -- as though an LED screen.  EME is not a form of pidgin English.  Such facts do not, however, favor or militate against LDS doctrine.  Indeed, I have heard no adequate or convincing explanation as to why these facts came to be, nor what they mean.  Perhaps you have a suggestion.

8 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

Anyway, the Book of Mormon is clearly referring to the Tower of Babel in it's own text in Omni. The heading in Ether 1 calls it the Tower of Babel as well. The headings aren't scripture? What's the point of having living prophets again?

As long as you believe in the infallibility of the Pope and of Mormon prophets, it will seem to you that the headings are Scriptural and holy.  What else could they be?  All the while, you have missed the nuance of my point about the insertion of "Babel" as a late glosse in post-Exilic Hebrew biblical texts.  It is something that would only impress a scholar.

[Robert F. Smith]

8 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

So...we're in agreement the author of Ether falls into one of the following two categories? A) Person with 19th c. Biblical Christian worldview or B) Person with 20th c. Biblical Christian worldview

Since the BoM predates the 20th c., I'm pleasantly surprised to find so much agreement between us.  

Well, of course the BofM text comes from the 16th century, and only appears on the surface to entail a 19th century biblical worldview.

[Honorentheos]

So curelom is now early modern English? Just to be clear, here. The word came from someone who lived in Elizabethan England?

[Honorentheos]

Keep in mind that the BoM is claiming two different authors who both attest that -

1) The so-called great tower is associated with the confounding of the languages which the Jaredites are being protected from when they are sent to the Americas; and

2) The story is associated with the history of man as recorded in the Jewish scripture

One of these two authors does not come close to claiming he could read let alone saw the record of the Jaredites while Mormon is summarizing the story for us directly off of plates he is able to read assumedly by the same means as Mosiah was able to back at the time recorded in Omni.

On top of this, we're suggesting adding two layers.

1) The Jaredites were actually participants in a more historical version of events where languages were not confounded by God to keep people from building a city with a tower that could reach heaven; rather, they were part of the broader Mesopotamian context where they were picking up phrases and language from a variety of sources as they traveled by miracle to the New World...

2) The record of the Nephites, including Mormon's summarization of the history of the Jaredites as well as the first hand account of someone named Amaleki, the son of Abinadom (Cureloms, son of Cumons...man that guy loved alliteration...) were divinely transmitted to a person or persons living in Elizabethan England who created a record in Early Middle English, which record was then transmitted to Joseph Smith in an absolute tight, letter-by-letter translation.

 

OR

The BoM claims to be written by early inhabitants of the Americas. Joseph Smith, the single absolutely without-a-doubt known participant in the process that gave us the BoM, claims to have been the seer who God gave the gift of translation to according to the D&C (at one time being the only gift he got to claim but then God took a mulligan on that one...) And the same Joseph Smith is known to have told stories of the Lamanites being the descendants of the same peoples, describes the setting around him and the people who listened to him that the artifact evidence around them was of the destroyed Nephite nation, and also happened to belong to a culture that assumed the Native Americans were not capable of the advanced civilizations they saw in artifact form so assumed other explanations were needed such as these people were part of the lost tribes of Israel. The same Joseph Smith believed in a literal flood which gets described in the Book of Mormon, a literal Tower of Babel which gets described in the Book of Mormon and a literal Garden of Eden which gets described in the Book of Mormon. All of which is problematic to the informed 21st c. reader.

So, we get to choose: Joseph Smith made it up, with or without help. Or all that other stuff at the start of this post.

Yeah, I'm the one who want to have his cake and eat it, too.  

Edited July 7, 2017 by Honorentheos

[Okrahomer]

1 hour ago, Honorentheos said:

Here are your options -

Joseph Smith attempted to make the BoM sound like it is scriptural like the Bible and written by people who used phrases that sounds like pidgined English

The BoM was written by people who used phrases that sound like pidgined English and God gave this to Joseph Smith to put on paper through whatever process you favor (Joseph = translator, Joseph = transcriber, Joseph = vehicle for 15th c. English translators, etc., etc., etc.)

Anyway, the Book of Mormon is clearly referring to the Tower of Babel in it's own text in Omni. The heading in Ether 1 calls it the Tower of Babel as well. The headings aren't scripture? What's the point of having living prophets again?

 

Just these two options?  How can that be?  There are more theories than this just among our critics.

I'm not aware that it has ever been claimed that the chapter headings are prophetic.

[Honorentheos]

...because the corruption of scripture by scribes and priests is just how Christ's church has always rolled from the beginning?

[Okrahomer]

8 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

Yeah, I'm the one who want to have his cake and eat it, too.  

I apologize for the "eat cake, have cake" remark.  You are right to throw it back at me.  My only excuse is that I'm a bit fatigued these days--probably not the sharpest tool in the shed at the moment.

[Physics Guy]

9 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Royal Skousen & Stanford Carmack have provided definitive evidence of the Early Modern English Book of Mormon ... .

Is it supposed to be an unequivocal fact that the Book of Mormon is in Early Modern English, or is it just that IF you assume it to be written correctly in the standard grammar of some era, then an Early Modern era is the closest match?

In the second case, the Early Modern English theory would be interesting grist for Mormons to grind, but for non-Mormons it would be of less interest than the question of how well the Book of Mormon language can fit a model of faux-archaic English such as might be produced by fraudsters who were aiming for, say, King James Bible English, but screwed it up a bit.

On the other hand, if we're supposed to accept it as proven fact that the Book of Mormon is in perfect Early Modern English, then I'm surprised that I haven't already seen this story on news sites, because it would be a major linguistic discovery to show definitely that a fairly well-known text that had long been dated to the 1820's really came from centuries earlier. I don't think the religious nature of the text in question would put off linguists, because indeed the date of composition is neither here nor there as far as the authenticity of the Book of Mormon is concerned. People who want to believe the Book is fake can perfectly well suppose that Joseph Smith found an old fake book and published it; people who want to believe the Book came from God can suppose that God can use any dialect God wants.

[Tacenda]

1 hour ago, Okrahomer said:

I apologize for the "eat cake, have cake" remark.  You are right to throw it back at me.  My only excuse is that I'm a bit fatigued these days--probably not the sharpest tool in the shed at the moment.

Sorry to hear this Okra! Can't wait for the treatments to be done with. 

[Pete Ahlstrom]

11 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Royal Skousen & Stanford Carmack have provided definitive evidence of the Early Modern English Book of Mormon, and that Joseph only read the text off the seer stone -- as though an LED screen.  EME is not a form of pidgin English.  Such facts do not, however, favor or militate against LDS doctrine.  Indeed, I have heard no adequate or convincing explanation as to why these facts came to be, nor what they mean.  Perhaps you have a suggestion.

I have a suggestion: perhaps you could change your paradigm from believing to skeptical?  I think if you did that, the EmodE cloud formations you and Messrs Carmack and Skousen see would appear as mere clouds again.

[Robert F. Smith]

31 minutes ago, Pete Ahlstrom said:

I have a suggestion: perhaps you could change your paradigm from believing to skeptical?  I think if you did that, the EmodE cloud formations you and Messrs Carmack and Skousen see would appear as mere clouds again.

I guess you missed scientific method 101, Pete, in which the evidence is allowed to speak more loudly than apriori opinions.  If you wish to call into question the conclusions of Carmack & Skousen, I have no problem with that, but you should be fully conscious of the need to present your case in substantive terms.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

Is it supposed to be an unequivocal fact that the Book of Mormon is in Early Modern English, or is it just that IF you assume it to be written correctly in the standard grammar of some era, then an Early Modern era is the closest match?

In the second case, the Early Modern English theory would be interesting grist for Mormons to grind, but for non-Mormons it would be of less interest than the question of how well the Book of Mormon language can fit a model of faux-archaic English such as might be produced by fraudsters who were aiming for, say, King James Bible English, but screwed it up a bit.

Since EME is present systematically, rather than as an occasional affect (not effect) -- with the stress on the first syllable of "affect." -- it is unlikely to be a pastiche by fraudsters or screw-ups.

2 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

On the other hand, if we're supposed to accept it as proven fact that the Book of Mormon is in perfect Early Modern English, then I'm surprised that I haven't already seen this story on news sites, because it would be a major linguistic discovery to show definitely that a fairly well-known text that had long been dated to the 1820's really came from centuries earlier. I don't think the religious nature of the text in question would put off linguists, because indeed the date of composition is neither here nor there as far as the authenticity of the Book of Mormon is concerned. People who want to believe the Book is fake can perfectly well suppose that Joseph Smith found an old fake book and published it; people who want to believe the Book came from God can suppose that God can use any dialect God wants.

That is all undoubtedly true, but it does beg the question of why and how.  Of course there is nothing perfect.  That would be a fallacy.

[Damien the Leper]

On 7/3/2017 at 6:38 AM, CV75 said:

You Google it. I present to you, culottes made of the fnest curelom wool.

 

 

Facepalm.

[Atheist Mormon]

Quote

Are cureloms imaginary?

What is not imaginary in Scriptures?

[Pete Ahlstrom]

4 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I guess you missed scientific method 101, Pete, in which the evidence is allowed to speak more loudly than apriori opinions.  If you wish to call into question the conclusions of Carmack & Skousen, I have no problem with that, but you should be fully conscious of the need to present your case in substantive terms.

Well, one must look at it as a whole and not in parts. The evidence for historicity is so scant so one should conclude that EmodE in the book of mormon, if there, comes from the 19th century and not earlier. Use your scientific method to refute archeologists, geneticists, and linguists that doubt historicity. Glaringly dna doesnt support an influx of isrealites into the americas in and around 600 bc. If you can show that, then I would consider EmodE as something other than wishful thinking.

[Robert F. Smith]

6 hours ago, Pete Ahlstrom said:

Well, one must look at it as a whole and not in parts.

An excellent principle, but one which you do not seem willing to implement.  Taking an atomistic approach (focus on single problems, out of context) hasn't been of much use generally. I would recommend that you learn something about better scholarly approaches to Scripture through a careful reading of the following:

Peter Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It (Harper One, 2015).

Marc Zvi Brettler, Peter Enns, and Daniel J. Harrington, The Bible and the Believer: How to Read the Bible Critically and Religiously (Oxford University Press, 2012).

6 hours ago, Pete Ahlstrom said:

The evidence for historicity is so scant so one should conclude that EmodE in the book of mormon, if there, comes from the 19th century and not earlier.

Early Modern English did not exist in the 19th century, having long since gone extinct, and the scholarship to reproduce it did not exist.  Certainly, the systematic EME grammar and phrasing could not have been accidentally reinvented by a country bumpkin -- well maybe by the tooth fairy . . .

6 hours ago, Pete Ahlstrom said:

Use your scientific method to refute archeologists, geneticists, and linguists that doubt historicity.

Hardly any archeologists, geneticists, or linguistics experts have anything at all to say about the Book of Mormon, and do not generally take the time to even consider it.  So what are you imagining needs to be refuted?  The apriori statemens of anti-Mormon yokels who have no expertise in those specialties?  Wouldn't it be better to put aside the notion of refutation, and to adopt the dispasssionate conclusions of normative science in these areas?

6 hours ago, Pete Ahlstrom said:

Glaringly dna doesnt support an influx of isrealites into the americas in and around 600 bc. If you can show that, then I would consider EmodE as something other than wishful thinking.

Too bad that (aside from your inability to spell "Israelites") you are so unfamiliar with DNA studies as to imagine that they refute Book of Mormon historicity.  Those who know nothing of genetics often make such empty and false claims.  Given genetic drift, the bottleneck effect, and other realities, why would we expect to easily find such evidence in modern populations?  The only real alternative is to excavate supposed Nephite-Lamanite-Mulekite sites and to study the ancient skeletal remains from appropriate strata, and to extract the ancient DNA (aDNA).  Easier said than done.

Indicative of the problem is the fact that, around 250,000 years ago, "a small group from our own ancestral line [homo sapiens] ventured out of Africa and bred with Neanderthals. This now lost tribe of humans was large enough to leave their mitochondria, but not so big to leave a significant mark on the Neanderthal's nuclear DNA."  https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/89ddcba1-8885-3a1e-973c-19bf5f956ef8/ss_new-dna-from-a-neanderthal.html .

Likewise, we know archeologically that Vikings had colonized Newfoundland, but are unable to find any DNA evidence in the native population of their presence there.

[Physics Guy]

18 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Since EME is present systematically, rather than as an occasional affect (not effect) -- with the stress on the first syllable of "affect." -- it is unlikely to be a pastiche by fraudsters or screw-ups.

But the fraud theory is not that these guys just threw in wild archaisms every now and then as affectations, whenever the fit took them. It's that they were trying to achieve a consistent "Bible-ese", but since they weren't linguists, their notion of Biblical language was distorted. They exaggerated the most archaic features of Biblical language, because those were the features that stood out to them as distinctively Bible-ish. And they might also have exaggerated elements that resonated with other archaic language that they had heard, because they couldn't distinguish fine shades of archaic dialect.

The result would be a systematic dialect, of a sort—just not a natural one. It would be roughly King James, but in detail it would show significantly higher frequencies of archaic constructions. So I don't see how the systematic nature of Book of Mormon language patterns is inconsistent with fraud.

Edited July 8, 2017 by Physics Guy

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

But the fraud theory is not that these guys just threw in wild archaisms every now and then as affectations, whenever the fit took them. It's that they were trying to achieve a consistent "Bible-ese", but since they weren't linguists, their notion of Biblical language was distorted. They exaggerated the most archaic features of Biblical language, because those were the features that stood out to them as distinctively Bible-ish. And they might also have exaggerated elements that resonated with other archaic language that they had heard, because they couldn't distinguish fine shades of archaic dialect.

The result would be a systematic dialect, of a sort—just not a natural one. It would be roughly King James, but in detail it would show significantly higher frequencies of archaic constructions. So I don't see how the systematic nature of Book of Mormon language patterns is inconsistent with fraud.

I guess that you are completely unfamiliar with Stanford Carmack's work and with the systematic nature of specific languages and dialects.  I am not speaking at all of KJV-style.  Anyone can ape that more or less, and many scholars have done so in their English translations of ancient texts.  That is not at all what EME does.  The two phenomena are completely unrelated.  EME appears full-blown as high style at a particular time and place in English, then disappears never to be recreated.  The same is true of the earlier Middle English language of Chaucer, and of the still earlier Old English of Beowulf.  Since you don't understand how language changes through time, you just don't know what that means, and so you imagine a pidgin mishmash which anyone could create virtually by accident.  No grammatical rules, no special vocabulary and phrasing.  Just a mishmash.  As if basing physics on fantasy, more or less.

[Physics Guy]

I'm not speaking of KJV style either, but of an imperfect attempt to ape it. Imperfect imitation of KJV English would probably not produce perfect EME, either. The question, however, is whether the methodology of Carmack and Skousen is capable of distinguishing between actual EME and an imperfect imitation of KJV English that exaggerated certain archaisms. 

As it happens, I do know something of how languages change in time. My wife is a linguistics professor who spent five years in the 1990's at the same Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen at which Royal Skousen spent his sabbatical in 2001. As well as talking with my wife, I've hung around a fair bit with the other linguists she knows. I'm not up on all the details, but I know the kinds of things linguists do. All that Carmack can do is compute frequencies of various constructions, as they appear in the Book of Mormon, and compare those with the average frequencies in known English texts from different eras. That's all he can do, as far as I can see. What other data is there?

There is a limit to how precisely the frequencies can ever match the averages for any time, because every individual writer has their own stylistic quirks, and for that matter people write differently from day to day. The frequencies in any one tale by Chaucer don't exactly match those in any other tale; they're simply all within the ranges that were typical for Chaucer's day. If we find a text that doesn't quite match those typical ranges, then it probably wasn't written exactly when Chaucer wrote, but then again it might well have been, if the writer had happened to write somewhat unusually. The more different the usage frequencies are, the more unusual the writing would have been for that particular time. That's all you can say from this kind of evidence. It's a game of percentages.

Given that, I don't see how Carmack can possibly have found a really perfect match between Book of Mormon English and natural English of any particular time and place. Such perfect matches don't exist, by their nature. Whereas on the other hand an imperfect imitation of KJV English would also have some characteristic set of frequencies of usage of different constructions. Might they happen to come reasonably close to the frequencies of some natural historical dialect? This is the question.

It seems to me that they might well come close that way, especially if you fiddled around a bit with exactly what frequencies you considered, and how you computed them, and what era you picked as your matching target, and how close a match you'd accept as "close". That would yield a false positive identification of fake grammar as EME grammar. How do we know that this isn't what has happened for Carmack?

I'm not a linguist myself, but I've discussed linguistics problems with a number of distinguished linguists, and when I've asked them questions like this, they've given me serious answers. So I'm actually pretty sure that my question is not just a naive one. I think it's a good question that needs a good answer. I'm perfectly prepared to hear a good answer to it, but I'm not so easy to just snow.

[thesometimesaint]

On 7/6/2017 at 9:54 PM, Honorentheos said:

...because the corruption of scripture by scribes and priests is just how Christ's church has always rolled from the beginning?

Yes. We don't believe in the infallibility of any mortal, or group of mortals.

[USU78]

1 hour ago, Physics Guy said:

I'm not speaking of KJV style either, but of an imperfect attempt to ape it. Imperfect imitation of KJV English would probably not produce perfect EME, either. The question, however, is whether the methodology of Carmack and Skousen is capable of distinguishing between actual EME and an imperfect imitation of KJV English that exaggerated certain archaisms. 

As it happens, I do know something of how languages change in time. My wife is a linguistics professor who spent five years in the 1990's at the same Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen at which Royal Skousen spent his sabbatical in 2001. As well as talking with my wife, I've hung around a fair bit with the other linguists she knows. I'm not up on all the details, but I know the kinds of things linguists do. All that Carmack can do is compute frequencies of various constructions, as they appear in the Book of Mormon, and compare those with the average frequencies in known English texts from different eras. That's all he can do, as far as I can see. What other data is there?

There is a limit to how precisely the frequencies can ever match the averages for any time, because every individual writer has their own stylistic quirks, and for that matter people write differently from day to day. The frequencies in any one tale by Chaucer don't exactly match those in any other tale; they're simply all within the ranges that were typical for Chaucer's day. If we find a text that doesn't quite match those typical ranges, then it probably wasn't written exactly when Chaucer wrote, but then again it might well have been, if the writer had happened to write somewhat unusually. The more different the usage frequencies are, the more unusual the writing would have been for that particular time. That's all you can say from this kind of evidence. It's a game of percentages.

Given that, I don't see how Carmack can possibly have found a really perfect match between Book of Mormon English and natural English of any particular time and place. Such perfect matches don't exist, by their nature. Whereas on the other hand an imperfect imitation of KJV English would also have some characteristic set of frequencies of usage of different constructions. Might they happen to come reasonably close to the frequencies of some natural historical dialect? This is the question.

It seems to me that they might well come close that way, especially if you fiddled around a bit with exactly what frequencies you considered, and how you computed them, and what era you picked as your matching target, and how close a match you'd accept as "close". That would yield a false positive identification of fake grammar as EME grammar. How do we know that this isn't what has happened for Carmack?

I'm not a linguist myself, but I've discussed linguistics problems with a number of distinguished linguists, and when I've asked them questions like this, they've given me serious answers. So I'm actually pretty sure that my question is not just a naive one. I think it's a good question that needs a good answer. I'm perfectly prepared to hear a good answer to it, but I'm not so easy to just snow.

And you have thus made a faith-based choice to trust that evidence supportive of your faith will be produced by those you trust and whose faith you share. Interesting, eh?

[Gray]

Cureloms are undefined. So not enough information to make a conclusion here.

[thesometimesaint]

11 minutes ago, Gray said:

Cureloms are undefined. So not enough information to make a conclusion here.

Agreed.

[Robert F. Smith]

3 hours ago, Physics Guy said:

I'm not speaking of KJV style either, but of an imperfect attempt to ape it. Imperfect imitation of KJV English would probably not produce perfect EME, either. The question, however, is whether the methodology of Carmack and Skousen is capable of distinguishing between actual EME and an imperfect imitation of KJV English that exaggerated certain archaisms.

Not certain what you are trying to say here, but it doesn't appear to be rational and based on real linguistics.  More like comparing EME to a summer's day . . . a flight of fancy.  Which is nice when one is writing a love sonnet.  

Quote

.................................... All that Carmack can do is compute frequencies of various constructions, as they appear in the Book of Mormon, and compare those with the average frequencies in known English texts from different eras. That's all he can do, as far as I can see. What other data is there?

There is a limit to how precisely the frequencies can ever match the averages for any time, because every individual writer has their own stylistic quirks, and for that matter people write differently from day to day. The frequencies in any one tale by Chaucer don't exactly match those in any other tale; they're simply all within the ranges that were typical for Chaucer's day. If we find a text that doesn't quite match those typical ranges, then it probably wasn't written exactly when Chaucer wrote, but then again it might well have been, if the writer had happened to write somewhat unusually. The more different the usage frequencies are, the more unusual the writing would have been for that particular time. That's all you can say from this kind of evidence. It's a game of percentages.

Given that, I don't see how Carmack can possibly have found a really perfect match between Book of Mormon English and natural English of any particular time and place. Such perfect matches don't exist, by their nature. Whereas on the other hand an imperfect imitation of KJV English would also have some characteristic set of frequencies of usage of different constructions. Might they happen to come reasonably close to the frequencies of some natural historical dialect? This is the question.

It seems to me that they might well come close that way, especially if you fiddled around a bit with exactly what frequencies you considered, and how you computed them, and what era you picked as your matching target, and how close a match you'd accept as "close". That would yield a false positive identification of fake grammar as EME grammar. How do we know that this isn't what has happened for Carmack?

an imperfect imitation of KJV English, stylistic quirks, a game of percentages, fiddling around, and producing fake EME grammar -- really?  And you mix that with the fallacy of the call to perfection, which you yourself declare cannot be?  This is your substantive evaluation of Carmack?

Quote

........................................................ I'm not so easy to just snow.

If you are not so easily snowed, why then have you completely missed the actual nature of what Carmack has done?  I surmise that you simply have not read his work, and do not understand the points which I have summarized.  I came from a position on BofM translation which was exactly opposite to that of my friend Royal Skousen.  I found that Brant Gardner independently shared many of my carefully-thought-out views on translation.  I was pretty sure of myself.  Then Stanford Carmack began publishing his research.  I carefully read each installment, and have been forced by the hard evidence to accept the problems raised by EME.  If you have something substantive to say on the matter, by all means enlighten us.  Thus far, however, it is clear that you haven't read the research:

Carmack, Stanford, “A Look at Some ‘Nonstandard’ Book of Mormon Grammar,” Interpreter, 11 (2014): 209-262, online at http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/a-look-at-some-nonstandard-book-of-mormon-grammar/ .

Carmack, Stanford, “What Command Syntax Tells Us About Book of Mormon Authorship,” Interpreter, 13 (2015): 175-217, online at http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/what-command-syntax-tells-us-about-book-of-mormon-authorship/ .

Carmack, Stanford, “The Implications of Past-Tense Syntax in the Book of Mormon,” Interpreter, 14 (2015): 119-186, online at http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/the-implications-of-past-tense-syntax-in-the-book-of-mormon/ .

Carmack, Stanford, “Why the Oxford English Dictionary (and not Webster’s 1828),” Interpreter, 15 (2015): 65-77, online at http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/why-the-oxford-english-dictionary-and-not-websters-1828/ .

Carmack, Stanford, “Exploding the Myth of Unruly Book of Mormon Grammar,” lecture at BYU English Language of the Book of Mormon Conference, April 9, 2015, video online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHJzY_9RZ4E .

Carmack, Stanford, and Royal Skousen, “Editing Out the ‘Bad Grammar’ in the Book of Mormon,” BYU lecture May 15, 2016, video online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuMOQDJagQ8 

Carmack, Stanford, “The More Part of the Book of Mormon Is Early Modern English,” Interpreter, 18 (2016): 33-40, online at http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/the-more-part-of-the-book-of-mormon-is-early-modern-english/ .

Carmack, Stanford, “Joseph Smith Read the Words,” Interpreter, 18 (2016): 41-64, online at 
   http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/joseph-smith-read-the-words/ .

Carmack, Stanford, “The Case of the {-th} Plural in the Earliest Text,” Interpreter, 18 (2016):79-108, online at http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/the-case-of-the-th-plural-in-the-earliest-text/ .

Carmack, Stanford, “The Case of Plural Was in the Earliest Text,” Interpreter, 18 (2016):109-137, online at http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/the-case-of-plural was-in-the-earliest-text/ .

Carmack, Stanford,  “How Joseph Smith’s Grammar Differed from Book of Mormon Grammar: Evidence from the 1832 History,” Interpreter, 25 (2017): 239-259, online at http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/how-joseph-smiths-grammar-differed-from-book-of-mormon-grammar-evidence-from-the-1832-history/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mormoninterpreter+(Interpreter%3A+A+Journal+of+Mormon+Scripture+(RSS)) .

Edited July 8, 2017 by Robert F. Smith