Fields Roper Book of Mormon Wordprint Study

[churchistrue]

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

Help me understand your four quadrant charts. On both axes you have a scale from 0 to 1. What is being quantified with these values?

Horizontal is what I define as N (narrative) vs S (sermon). Vertical is O (original) vs L (late). Though analysis, I identified about 300 n-grams and gave them a score on the N-S range and a score on the O-L range. The axis is that score, normalized for total word count, and then normalized again on a 0 to 1 scale.

 

[Robert F. Smith]

7 hours ago, JarMan said:

Did somebody just mention Grotius? 

Yes, I did, but I was playing off you, JarMan.

[champatsch]

I hope that the base text for these new stylometric studies is the critical text, otherwise these studies will once again be less interesting and less accurate.

The Book of Mormon's sermon language contains expert blending of King James phrases as well as a significant amount of Protestant Reformation language, most of which originates before the 18th century. An example of the former is the following:

Moroni 10:30–31
        And again I would exhort you
        that ye would come unto Christ
        and lay hold upon every good gift,
        and touch not the evil gift nor the unclean thing.
        And awake and arise from the dust, O Jerusalem!
        Yea, and put on thy beautiful garments, O daughter of Zion,
        and strengthen thy stakes and enlarge thy borders forever,
        that thou mayest no more be confounded,
        that the covenants of the Eternal Father
        which he hath made unto thee, O house of Israel,
        may be fulfilled.

These two verses contain phrases from seven King James passages (counting Isaiah 52:1-2 as one), in the following order: Hebrews 6:18, James 1:17, 2 Corinthians 6:17, Ephesians 5:14, Isaiah 52:2, Isaiah 52:1, Isaiah 52:2, Isaiah 54:2, Exodus 34:24. The Book of Mormon passage flows evenly so that it isn't immediately recognizable.

[churchistrue]

15 minutes ago, champatsch said:

I hope that the base text for these new stylometric studies is the critical text, otherwise these studies will once again be less interesting and less accurate.

The Book of Mormon's sermon language contains expert blending of King James phrases as well as a significant amount of Protestant Reformation language, most of which originates before the 18th century. An example of the former is the following:

Moroni 10:30–31
        And again I would exhort you
        that ye would come unto Christ
        and lay hold upon every good gift,
        and touch not the evil gift nor the unclean thing.
        And awake and arise from the dust, O Jerusalem!
        Yea, and put on thy beautiful garments, O daughter of Zion,
        and strengthen thy stakes and enlarge thy borders forever,
        that thou mayest no more be confounded,
        that the covenants of the Eternal Father
        which he hath made unto thee, O house of Israel,
        may be fulfilled.

These two verses contain phrases from seven King James passages (counting Isaiah 52:1-2 as one), in the following order: Hebrews 6:18, James 1:17, 2 Corinthians 6:17, Ephesians 5:14, Isaiah 52:2, Isaiah 52:1, Isaiah 52:2, Isaiah 54:2, Exodus 34:24. The Book of Mormon passage flows evenly so that it isn't immediately recognizable.

Agree the KJV intertexuality is remarkable. Did you read this post I did previously that pointed out a couple other verses similar to this that combine random KJV snippets?  http://www.churchistrue.com/blog/king-james-bible-language-in-the-book-of-mormon/

for example:

Here’s another example  Mormon 9:2

2 Behold, will ye believe in the day of your visitation—behold, when the Lord shall come, yea, even that great day when the earth shall be rolled together as a scroll, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, yea, in that great day when ye shall be brought to stand before the Lamb of God—then will ye say that there is no God?

Isaiah 34: 4

And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree.

Numbers 10: 10

Also in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, and in the beginnings of your months, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; that they may be to you for a memorial before your

2 Peter 3: 10

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

Acts 23: 8

For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both.

2 Kings 5: 15

And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came, and stood before him: and he said, Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel: now therefore, I pray thee, take a blessing of thy servant.

John 1: 36

And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God!

Matthew 10: 18

And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.

Luke 21: 36

Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.

Revelation 6: 17

For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

 

[churchistrue]

12 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I would suggest the word "traditional" rather than "faithful" since we do not get to judge who is faithful or not

Some of us who are "faithful" can be VERY non-traditional.  Not that I know anyone like that. 

Good point. I also describe myself as faithful and non-traditional.

Edited February 24, 2018 by churchistrue

[champatsch]

2 hours ago, churchistrue said:

Here’s another example  Mormon 9:2

2 Behold, will ye believe in the day of your visitation—behold, when the Lord shall come, yea, even that great day when the earth shall be rolled together as a scroll, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, yea, in that great day when ye shall be brought to stand before the Lamb of God—then will ye say that there is no God?

Isaiah 34: 4

And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree.

Numbers 10: 10

Also in the day of your gladness, and in your solemn days, and in the beginnings of your months, ye shall blow with the trumpets over your burnt offerings, and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; that they may be to you for a memorial before your

2 Peter 3: 10

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

Acts 23: 8

For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both.

2 Kings 5: 15

And he returned to the man of God, he and all his company, and came, and stood before him: and he said, Behold, now I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel: now therefore, I pray thee, take a blessing of thy servant.

John 1: 36

And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God!

Matthew 10: 18

And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.

Luke 21: 36

Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.

Revelation 6: 17

For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

 

You have to be careful not to overdo n-gram comparisons.  Some of the above are not strong candidates for intertextuality.  They are too universal in application.

[Calm]

5 hours ago, churchistrue said:

I used the BOM Voices db from a BYU study project. Most voices are split wholly N or wholly S (ie Zeniff N, Alma Amulek Abinadi etc S). The four main narrators Mormon, Moroni, Nephi, Jacob I had to comb through verse by verse to allocate between S and N. For Mormon it's easy, because he's almost entirely N. The parameter for dividing the narrators was a qualitative evaluation whether they were narrating storyline in the verse or whether they were teaching/testifying. 

So you assigned it yourself without comparing your choices to anyone else's based on how you interpreted it?

That sounds problematic to me.  At the very least I would suggest getting several people to do the same at least for large random sections and see if there is much difference of opinion on which text is which if you haven't done so already.

What significance do you find from splitting it into the two voices?  I understand that some authors write more sermon than provide the context through narrative, but I don't see anything inherent in choosing to tell the story or preach.  

Also verses...since the original text was not divided into verses, could not using verses imposed on by a nonauthor  as your unit introduce another factor?  Wouldn't it be better to do it by number of words or sentences?

Have you done any comparative studies to show that such splitting provides us with information beyond what the author wanted to write on a particular day?

Say like taking General Conference talks for several years and divide talks into percentages of narrative and sermon.

 

Edited February 24, 2018 by Calm

[churchistrue]

39 minutes ago, Calm said:

So you assigned it yourself without comparing your choices to anyone else's based on how you interpreted it?

That sounds problematic to me.  At the very least I would suggest getting several people to do the same at least for large random sections and see if there is much difference of opinion on which text is which if you haven't done so already.

What significance do you find from splitting it into the two voices?  I understand that some authors write more sermon than provide the context through narrative, but I don't see anything inherent in choosing to tell the story or preach.  

Also verses...since the original text was not divided into verses, could not using verses imposed on by a nonauthor  as your unit introduce another factor?  Wouldn't it be better to do it by number of words or sentences?

Have you done any comparative studies to show that such splitting provides us with information beyond what the author wanted to write on a particular day?

Say like taking General Conference talks for several years and divide talks into percentages of narrative and sermon.

 

Did you read through the S vs N comparison in my article? That should show the important of separating S vs N when comparing. When you look at it, you realize how significant the difference is. First person vs third person. S is using more KJV style like ye, shall, doth, hath, etc. The vocabulary patterns are totally different. Controlling for this by splitting this out and comparing apples to apples between the authors/voices is critical, according to my analysis.

I would love to get other people to follow up on my findings. In nearly every post I practically beg for it.   I'll share my data with anyone. I would love to do those studies myself as you suggest. I wish I had more time to do it. It's fun. But I have a job and a family and a life. I do what I can, and what I have interest to do. I also say frequently I don't have quite the skill set to pull this off properly. I can spot the trends and the proper logic for the set up of the studies. But then again, I'm skeptical a bit of the concept of "proper statistical study". We don't have multiple 19th century works that claim to be translations of ancient writings from multiple voice, with tons of KJV intertextuality, and written as narrative combined with chunks of direct gospel preaching. And we'd need a few of those samples to be real and a few to be frauds to get a proper study. So I doubt we'll ever be able to do perfect studies. But we can try and point out the weaknesses of the various attempts and get closer over time.

 

 

 

[Robert F. Smith]

27 minutes ago, churchistrue said:

...........................When you look at it, you realize how significant the difference is. First person vs third person. ......................

. We don't have multiple 19th century works that claim to be translations of ancient writings from multiple voice, with tons of KJV intertextuality, and written as narrative combined with chunks of direct gospel preaching. And we'd need a few of those samples to be real and a few to be frauds to get a proper study. So I doubt we'll ever be able to do perfect studies. But we can try and point out the weaknesses of the various attempts and get closer over time.

There is plenty of 19th century fiction, sermons, narrative, etc., to fill that bill.  I would also like to see the same analysis of 17th century literature.  For comparison.

[JarMan]

9 hours ago, churchistrue said:

Horizontal is what I define as N (narrative) vs S (sermon). Vertical is O (original) vs L (late). Though analysis, I identified about 300 n-grams and gave them a score on the N-S range and a score on the O-L range. The axis is that score, normalized for total word count, and then normalized again on a 0 to 1 scale.

 

I think I understand the general methodology. Would you be willing to share the nuts and bolts of your analysis? I'm interested in the n-grams you've chosen and the scores you've assigned. And I would like to see how you figured the scores for each of the people.

[Calm]

4 hours ago, churchistrue said:

Did you read through the S vs N comparison in my article? That should show the important of separating S vs N when comparing. When you look at it, you realize how significant the difference is. First person vs third person. S is using more KJV style like ye, shall, doth, hath, etc. The vocabulary patterns are totally different. Controlling for this by splitting this out and comparing apples to apples between the authors/voices is critical, according to my analysis.

I would love to get other people to follow up on my findings. In nearly every post I practically beg for it.   I'll share my data with anyone. I would love to do those studies myself as you suggest. I wish I had more time to do it. It's fun. But I have a job and a family and a life. I do what I can, and what I have interest to do. I also say frequently I don't have quite the skill set to pull this off properly. I can spot the trends and the proper logic for the set up of the studies. But then again, I'm skeptical a bit of the concept of "proper statistical study". We don't have multiple 19th century works that claim to be translations of ancient writings from multiple voice, with tons of KJV intertextuality, and written as narrative combined with chunks of direct gospel preaching. And we'd need a few of those samples to be real and a few to be frauds to get a proper study. So I doubt we'll ever be able to do perfect studies. But we can try and point out the weaknesses of the various attempts and get closer over time.

I just find it strange that you make this kind of appraisal below when you have had no indepth analysis of the effectiveness of your method.

"We're both reporting same results, but they're not capturing what's really going on."

How can you even know if it is the same results if you don't know their methodology and yours hasn't been tested yet?  I am just surprised you aren't more tentative.

Jusr rambling today...don't worry about answering.

Edited February 25, 2018 by Calm

[churchistrue]

1 hour ago, JarMan said:

I think I understand the general methodology. Would you be willing to share the nuts and bolts of your analysis? I'm interested in the n-grams you've chosen and the scores you've assigned. And I would like to see how you figured the scores for each of the people.

Sure. You can email me at churchistrueblog@gmail.com. 

[churchistrue]

20 minutes ago, Calm said:

I just find it strange that you make this kind of appraisal below when you have had no indepth analysis of the effectiveness of your method.

"We're both reporting same results, but they're not capturing what's really going on."

How can you even know if it is the same results if you don't know their methodology and yours hasn't been tested yet?  I am just surprised you aren't more tentative.

Look again at their chart compared to my chart with the voices as bubbles in different places. They match. So, we've both identified the the same variation. They stop there and say they are all unique voices. And that's fine. They are. But then I go further to show the variation is further due to a very simple model of S-N and O-L. And I further show that different BOM characters (ie bubbles in the chart) can be separated out to show the same kind of uniqueness. For example, you can take everything Mormon wrote and isolate it and call it its own book. And then come up with a theory that Mormon is actually a composite of four unique subvoices. And do the test and see that his four subset voices have huge variation, (ie the last chart there in my article). If Fields-Roper did this test, they would chart those four Mormon sub voice bubbles same place I do. 

[Calm]

56 minutes ago, churchistrue said:

Look again at their chart compared to my chart with the voices as bubbles in different places. They match. So, we've both identified the the same variation. They stop there and say they are all unique voices. And that's fine. They are. But then I go further to show the variation is further due to a very simple model of S-N and O-L. And I further show that different BOM characters (ie bubbles in the chart) can be separated out to show the same kind of uniqueness. For example, you can take everything Mormon wrote and isolate it and call it its own book. And then come up with a theory that Mormon is actually a composite of four unique subvoices. And do the test and see that his four subset voices have huge variation, (ie the last chart there in my article). If Fields-Roper did this test, they would chart those four Mormon sub voice bubbles same place I do. 

I am going to wait for their presentation before trying to see if your stuff and theirs aligns.  I don't want to put all that effort in and find out there was an essential piece of info missing.

[churchistrue]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

I am going to wait for their presentation before trying to see if your stuff and theirs aligns.  I don't want to put all that effort in and find out there was an essential piece of info missing.

No problem. I'm just putting this out there for those that are interested or have data modeling capability to incorporate my ideas. Thanks for the back and forth.

[clarkgoble]

Just to add, my qualms with these sorts of analysis - as opposed to more narrow analysis simply showing grammar and speech that Joseph seemed unaware of - is that it's completely unclear in Mosiah - Moroni what is a summary in Mormon's voice versus a relatively close paraphrase versus an actual quote. If, as I think, most of it is summaries by Mormon in his own voice (including purported speeches) then it seems this particular stylometry is doomed to failure. At best we can look at Nephi, Jacob and Lehi once we exclude Isaiah.

I'd also add that if the translation is, as I suspect, a very loose translation, then these sorts of analysis are doomed from the start. Again, thought that in the 90's. Continue to think it now.

The more recent stylometry analysis are far more interesting because they've found something that can't be explained that I can see. But they seem quite different from these wordprint analysis based upon connective words. It would seem to me that a highly compressed interpretive text leading to a loose translation would make connective worlds far less significant. At best if you look at the whole text you could compare it to Joseph, Sidney or others. But I don't think much more than that. And even then I'd be pretty skeptical.

Edited February 26, 2018 by clarkgoble

[cdowis]

6 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I'd also add that if the translation is, as I suspect, a very loose translation, then these sorts of analysis are doomed from the start. Again, thought that in the 90's. Continue to think it now.

The more recent stylometry analysis are far more interesting because they've found something that can't be explained that I can see. But they seem quite different from these wordprint analysis based upon connective words. It would seem to me that a highly compressed interpretive text leading to a loose translation would make connective worlds far less significant. At best if you look at the whole text you could compare it to Joseph, Sidney or others. But I don't think much more than that. And even then I'd be pretty skeptical.

Royal Skousen says the best evidence points to a tight translation.

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/publications/jbms/7/1/S00005-50be28d378b0e4Skousen.pdf

Edited February 27, 2018 by cdowis

[Gervin]

38 minutes ago, cdowis said:

Royal Skousen says the best evidence points to a tight translation.

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/publications/jbms/7/1/S00005-50be28d378b0e4Skousen.pdf

He says it points to "tight control."  He never says that Smith translated anything, his use of "translation process" not withstanding.

[cdowis]

19 minutes ago, Gervin said:

He says it points to "tight control."  He never says that Smith translated anything, his use of "translation process" not withstanding.

 

"The manuscripts and text show that Joseph Smith apparently received the translation word for word and letter for letter, in what is known as “tight control.”"

Read what he actually wrote rather that making stuff up.  You have lost your credibility  -- totally.

Edited February 27, 2018 by cdowis

[Gervin]

13 minutes ago, cdowis said:

 

"The manuscripts and text show that Joseph Smith apparently received the translation word for word and letter for letter, in what is known as “tight control.”"

Read what he actually wrote rather that making stuff up.  You have lost your credibility  -- totally.

uhhh, you just made my point.  He received the translation, he didn't translate anything.  Skouson says he received the translation in English.  Smith read words. He didn't translate words.  

[churchistrue]

8 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Just to add, my qualms with these sorts of analysis - as opposed to more narrow analysis simply showing grammar and speech that Joseph seemed unaware of - is that it's completely unclear in Mosiah - Moroni what is a summary in Mormon's voice versus a relatively close paraphrase versus an actual quote. If, as I think, most of it is summaries by Mormon in his own voice (including purported speeches) then it seems this particular stylometry is doomed to failure. At best we can look at Nephi, Jacob and Lehi once we exclude Isaiah.

I'd also add that if the translation is, as I suspect, a very loose translation, then these sorts of analysis are doomed from the start. Again, thought that in the 90's. Continue to think it now.

The more recent stylometry analysis are far more interesting because they've found something that can't be explained that I can see. But they seem quite different from these wordprint analysis based upon connective words. It would seem to me that a highly compressed interpretive text leading to a loose translation would make connective worlds far less significant. At best if you look at the whole text you could compare it to Joseph, Sidney or others. But I don't think much more than that. And even then I'd be pretty skeptical.

I agree with you that proof that the voices from the BOM that you think should be distinct, such as Moroni vs Nephi, it is found through wordprint study that they are not unique, or not unique enough to suggest separate authorship, I agree that is not proof the BOM is wrong or is a fraud. I think wordprint studies are important and valuable. My prediction is that over time as word print studies get better, the faithful position will move to the the "unique voices aren't preserved through translation" position.

 

[churchistrue]

1 hour ago, cdowis said:

Royal Skousen says the best evidence points to a tight translation.

https://publications.mi.byu.edu/publications/jbms/7/1/S00005-50be28d378b0e4Skousen.pdf

That may be the case, but whatever was being dictated, it wasn't an ancient source with multiple authors.

[cdowis]

10 hours ago, churchistrue said:

I agree with you that proof that the voices from the BOM that you think should be distinct, such as Moroni vs Nephi, it is found through wordprint study that they are not unique, or not unique enough to suggest separate authorship,

If the methodology of the study is flawed, it proves nothing -- it is baloney science.  It needs to pass a validation test in order to draw such a conclusion.  See the article by Hilton for an example.

Edited February 27, 2018 by cdowis

[churchistrue]

13 minutes ago, cdowis said:

If the methodology of the study is flawed, it proves nothing -- it is baloney science.  It needs to pass a validation test in order to draw such a conclusion.  See the article by Hilton for an example.

Of course.

[clarkgoble]

15 hours ago, churchistrue said:

That may be the case, but whatever was being dictated, it wasn't an ancient source with multiple authors.

Well that is the bone of contention. As I said I can't see how with a loose translation of a highly compressed idea based text this method could possibly discover authorship. It depends upon connective words which would be missing in the underlying text and therefore added later during the translation process. Now as I said I'm extremely skeptical of wordprint analysis on scientific grounds. But it just seems to me questionable it'd apply to the text in question given a very reasonable assumption of the nature of the underlying text. Thus my skepticism of this going back to the 90's.

There's a simple way to test this of course - deal with texts based upon ideograms and see what survives translation using wordprint analysis. It's telling that neither apologists nor critics have made this obvious test. Compare two translations of say the Tao Te Ching. Or better yet the Analytics comparing passages that are argued to have different authors.

Edited February 27, 2018 by clarkgoble