Carmack/Skousen: "Virtually none of the grammatical variants listed in section 4-archaic grammar are archaic."

[Bought Yahoo]

Lem,

I'm going to have to slow down your argument to understand it.

She used the Helsinki Corpus of Early Modern English to support her conclusions, as well as the Webster 1820s dictionary. At the time, she mostly implied the archaic nature was simply an artifact of Smith's speech, and in some cases, simply error in interpreting the dictation process. Some were unexplainable, and she left it at that.

So she was doing research on the Book of Mormon? The Helsinki Corpus was the waters she was testing Book of Mormon words in, and the webster dictionary was the control? Do you know if she was focused on Early Modern English exclusively or other periods of English also? I'm trying to put myself in her shoes at the time. Why would anyone say -- hey let's test Early Modern English to see if the Book of Mormon could have been influenced by something that doesn't make sense to influence it? if that was the reasoning, then why not explore other options also?

I've been a harsh critique of the Ye Olde English theory of the Book of Mormon, but I can't understand Lem's comments either.

It is likely that Carmack and Skousen lack the necessary peer-reviewed background to render opinons about English. Maybe.

[Lem]

Lem,

I'm going to have to slow down your argument to understand it.

She used the Helsinki Corpus of Early Modern English to support her conclusions, as well as the Webster 1820s dictionary. At the time, she mostly implied the archaic nature was simply an artifact of Smith's speech, and in some cases, simply error in interpreting the dictation process. Some were unexplainable, and she left it at that.

So she was doing research on the Book of Mormon? The Helsinki Corpus was the waters she was testing Book of Mormon words in, and the webster dictionary was the control? Do you know if she was focused on Early Modern English exclusively or other periods of English also? I'm trying to put myself in her shoes at the time. Why would anyone say -- hey let's test Early Modern English to see if the Book of Mormon could have been influenced by something that doesn't make sense to influence it? if that was the reasoning, then why not explore other options also?

I understand, and great questions, I pulled up some of my notes, From Skousen's 2005 announcement of Early Modern English:

It turns out that this discovery—that the nonstandard grammar of the Book of Mormon was in earlier English—is supported by a very important lexical finding about the vocabulary of the Book of Mormon, which was first brought up in Renee Bangerter’s 1998 BYU master’s thesis, written under my direction, Since Joseph Smith’s Time: Lexical Semantic Shifts in the Book of Mormon. Bangerter found three particular archaic word uses in the Book of Mormon. The first two, break and mar, are verbs that occur together in the same passage, and the context requires the rejection of the normal, current meanings for break and mar....
https://byustudies.byu.edu/content/lang ... ook-Mormon

Here is the paper:

1998-08-01
Since Joseph Smith's Time: Lexical Semantic shifts in the Book of Mormon
Renee Bangerter
Brigham Young University - Provo
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/vie ... ontext=etd

From her acknowledgements:

I am grateful to don Chapman who allowed our early modem english class to take on my thesis research for our study of the shakespeare lexicon and whose enthusiasm for this project has given me behind the scenes support.

I am especially indebted to my committee chair, royal skousen, who has overseen my research and writing for his critical text project since I was an undergraduate and whose direction and genius lead me to this thesis topic...

From ch l, Methodology

I located words in the Book of Mormon text that are commonly read, then located every occurrence of those words in the Book of Mormon as well as in other standard works. I analyzed dialectal definitions of these words listed in dictionaries that provide earlier or dialectical definitions, and I researched texts that provide examples from Early Modern English and Modern English to determine whether the sense and example of the word paralleled the Book of Mormon examples.

This study is part of my work on the Book of Mormon Critical Text project. I obtained words that cause potential misreadings of Book of Mormon passages from royal skousen, editor of the Book of Mormon Critical Text, and from my own readings...

I'll have to look up specifically where she said she used the Helsinki corpus, other than to note that in here references she lists the ICAME corpus, which contains the Helsinki

The diachronic part of the Helsinki Corpus is available in three main versions: 1) the 242 text files containing one text (or group of related texts) per file; 2) a one file version integrating all individual files (the order of files follows the chronology and the order of texts in the text type chart); 3) a WordCruncher version in three formats (one WordCruncher book containing the entire corpus; three books, each containing one main period; and eleven books, each containing one subperiod). In addition, our corpus is included in the CD-ROM disk "The new ICAME corpus collection CD-ROM".
http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/cor ... intro.html

Skousen's use of the Helsinki corpus for testing is discussed in his 2005 paper on his AM model, which was published the same year as his announcement re Early Modern English, posted in the Farms newletter.

AM is then tested on the case of the adjectival negative prefix in English (in-, un-, dis-, etc.), using the Middle and Early Modern English portions of the Helsinki corpus as a basis for prediction.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... 43EEC9C94E

I'm on a bad device at the moment for quoting, etc, but I'm happy to pull up what I can to answer questions.

in my opinion, Skousen directed the research toward Early Modern English without considering anything else, and initially used a corpus he was also using in unrelated research. The corpus was British, not English, and eventually had to be replaced, but, at least initially, he kept the invalid results.

[Lem]

I edited this on in the post above, but just wanted to note it

in my opinion, Skousen directed the research toward Early Modern English without considering anything else, and initially used a corpus he was also using in unrelated research. The corpus was British, not English, and eventually had to be replaced, but, at least initially, he kept the invalid results.

[Gadianton]

Great information, Lem.

Originally, Skousen had this "AM" model for predicting some kinds of language changes. Early Modern English was a logical part of that research, as you have to show the language rule working throughout different periods.

Set that aside.

Now over here, on the other side of the desk, you have the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, which is piecing together the earliest Book of Mormon text.

While many assume Joseph Smith was putting ancient things in his own words and using bad grammar, the best (only?) account of his procedure, reading words off of a stone, doesn't fit. For the faithful scholar, this raises an interesting challenge. How do you account for bad grammar? Just say God uses bad grammar? The words on the stone were first filtered through Joseph Smith's mind?

Who knows if Skousen was actively looking to solve for this, but at minimum, it had to be a persistent concern. And now on the other side of the desk, out of the different language periods he was looking at for AM, suddenly he notices in Early Modern English, a couple of these problem words that Joseph Smith used, and Early Modern English becomes his moldy orange. Whatever else it meant (Ghost committee), most importantly, it meant that the original Book of Mormon text might have been something Joseph Smith would have read, with his head in a hat, rather than made up.

Does that sound about right, up to this point?

[Lem]

Great information, Lem.

Originally, Skousen had this "AM" model for predicting some kinds of language changes. Early Modern English was a logical part of that research, as you have to show the language rule working throughout different periods.

Set that aside.

In general, yes, but I don't think you can fully set aside the possibility that his use of the Helsinki corpus in his 2005 paper had an influence on his critical text research process. Prior to the 2005 paper he tested his a limited part of his theory on some French words, then another area, then the last paper he wrote (as far as I know) on the AM model used the Early modern English corpus to test the model overall. That was the same year he decided that the Book of Mormon had Early Modern English in it. It is not evidence per se but it is an associated element, in my opinion, that fleshes out the story.

Now over here, on the other side of the desk, you have the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, which is piecing together the earliest Book of Mormon text.

While many assume Joseph Smith was putting ancient things in his own words and using bad grammar, the best (only?) account of his procedure, reading words off of a stone, doesn't fit. For the faithful scholar, this raises an interesting challenge. How do you account for bad grammar? Just say God uses bad grammar? The words on the stone were first filtered through Joseph Smith's mind?

Who knows if Skousen was actively looking to solve for this, but at minimum, it had to be a persistent concern.

I wasn't around for this, so I appreciate any additional information, but it is my understanding that prior to this, Skousen's writings proposed that the Book of Mormon language was Hebraic, not 19th century. Then, this Early Modern English data started showing up in his writings, just when his professional unrelated papers started testing on Early Modern English. I'll see if my notes have it, but just as an example, Skousen published this paper in 1994

The Original Language of the Book of Mormon: Upstate New York Dialect, King James English, or Hebrew?

Abstract

The original text of the Book of Mormon contains complex, Hebrew-like constructions that have been subsequently removed from the text because of their non-English character.

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol3/iss1/3/

I found this interesting from Skousen's conclusion:

What is important here is to realize that the original text of the Book of Mormon apparently contains expressions that are not characteristic of English at any place or time, in particular neither Joseph Smith's upstate New York dialect nor the King James Bible.

So at that point, at least, he was not of the opinion that English of any time period explained the anomalies.

And now on the other side of the desk, out of the different language periods he was looking at for AM, suddenly he notices in Early Modern English, a couple of these problem words that Joseph Smith used, and Early Modern English becomes his moldy orange. Whatever else it meant (Ghost committee), most importantly, it meant that the original Book of Mormon text might have been something Joseph Smith would have read, with his head in a hat, rather than made up.

Does that sound about right, up to this point?

Yes, although I am not totally sure what a "moldy orange" is(!!!), but from your context, I think so.

Keep in mind that, as far as I know, he did NOT test his AM on very many language periods, but rather did a couple of isolated and specific word group tests, then his final AM model testing was done only on Early Modern English and modern English, as defined by the British Helsinki corpus.

This however is a good question that needs more support to definitively answer than just my quick and dirty overview. Also, as far as I know, no other language time periods have been used as a control or alternate to the Early Modern English theory other than Smith's actual time period, with the exception of "future English", i.e. Now, which I recall Carmack briefly commenting on.

[Lem]

By the way, Gad, I was thinking of writing this up as a separate thread, your questions are extraordinarily helpful in that context!

[Gadianton]

Not even sure it was an orange, but I was thinking about penicillin.

it is my understanding that prior to this, Skousen's writings proposed that the Book of Mormon language was Hebraic, not 19th century.

Yes, I recall a youtube video where he was stuck arguing for both.

Why was it a problem that the original corpus was British? Does it matter what X is, so long as it can't be explained by Joseph Smith or his milieu?

A post with a synthesis of your material on this I'm sure would be appreciated by a lot of people. I think even the folks over at Sic et Non might like it, as it would be a chance to actually learn something about the theory they are sinking their money into.

[Lem]

Not even sure it was an orange, but I was thinking about penicillin.

it is my understanding that prior to this, Skousen's writings proposed that the Book of Mormon language was Hebraic, not 19th century.

Yes, I recall a youtube video where he was stuck arguing for both.

Why was it a problem that the original corpus was British? Does it matter what X is, so long as it can't be explained by Joseph Smith or his milieu?

To my nonprofessional understanding, not finding something that showed persistence beyond the Early Modern English timeframe, using a British corpus, is NOT the same as there being no persistence, because colonial language development lagged behind British language, and an American corpus would likely contain elements that reflect this, thus likely showing more persistence. To accurately show lack of persistence of language in Joseph Smith's world requires comparison to a corpus of the language in Joseph Smith's world. (Although I would certainly welcome a professional weighing in. Maybe when Symmachus returns from his mask-wearing, safely non-traveling sabbatical he might comment! )

A post with a synthesis of your material on this I'm sure would be appreciated by a lot of people. I think even the folks over at Sic et Non might like it, as it would be a chance to actually learn something about the theory they are sinking their money into.

That brings up an interesting note. In looking through my old notes to answer your questions, I noticed FARMS had plans for a critical text project, long before Early Modern English became a thing. Skousen discussed this in a 1990 paper:
https://byustudies.byu.edu/content/towa ... ook-Mormon

I'll have to look further into this, maybe it will give some clues as to why the Interpreter carries the burden for all Skousen's research in this area.

Thanks for your questions, it has forced me to pull together and document what was swirling around in my head. Maybe I will write it all up.

[Aristotle Smith]

--

[Lem]

The blog author wrote:

Regrettably, they were hampered at the time by limitations in the Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) database.

Tom has a post discussing this here:

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=15

Tom quoted Carmack saying:

"hampered by an inability to fully use the Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) database." "Now," though, "much of that difficulty has been overcome,

The inability to fully use the ECCO database and "limitations" in the ECCO database aren't the same thing. The blog author's paraphrase makes it sound like the database was defective in some way. Carmack's quote doesn't seem to add up to that.

I'll re-ask what I asked on the other thread:

was there any indication as to the reason behind not being able to "fully access" the ECCO? What could possibly be the issue here? I checked out the website and it seems like a straight-forward purchase and Gale seems to be a huge market player; was the database defective in some way? It's kind of hard to believe. It's even harder to believe that one would publish a set of books under that huge pricetag with a gaping hole built into the research. Wouldn't you work on solving the technical problems first before going full-steam ahead?

The reference to "not being able to 'fully access' the ECCO" reminds me of another issue that's been rolling around in my head. I looked up some of Carmack's earlier papers, and found a possible additional reason they may not have been fully accessing the relevant database.

First, a reminder of dates covered by two databases:

Links to the databases mentioned in this write-up:

...EEBO Early English Books Online (texts from the late 1400s up through 1700)

...ECCO Eighteenth Century Collections Online (texts from 1700 through 1800)

https://interpreterfoundation.org/pre-p ... of-Mormon/

Now, in Carmack's 2017 paper, "How Joseph Smith’s Grammar Differed from Book of Mormon Grammar..", note in the footnotes he indicates the main source used:

The principal English textual source used in this study was the Early English Books Online database (EEBO)

....I have mainly derived Early Modern English examples from a 700-million-word WordCruncher corpus that I made from almost 25,000 EEBO Phase 1 texts

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... 2-history/

This has apparently been his main approach in multiple papers. From a 2018 paper on whether the Book of Mormon is a pseudo-archaic text:

The principal English textual source used in this study was the Early English Books Online database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home). The publicly searchable portion of EEBO (Phase 1 texts) is currently found at https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebogroup. I have mainly derived Early Modern English examples from a precisely searchable 700-million-word WordCruncher corpus I made from approximately 25,000 EEBO Phase 1 texts....

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... haic-text/

It's not hard to see Early Modern English and miss persistence beyond that timeframe if you are mainly looking at a database that ends in 1700.

In a Feb 2020 article:

The primary sources consulted include Early English Books Online (EEBO), early English Bibles (from EEBO), the earliest text of the Book of Mormon (edited by Skousen), parts 3.1 to 3.4 of the critical text, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Google Books, 25 pseudobiblical texts, and Joseph Smith’s early writings...

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... sh-bibles/

But from footnote 7:

Among the 196 instances, 67 sixteenth-century documents have examples and 99 seventeenth-century documents have examples. The WordCruncher EEBO1 database I used has 3,037 sixteenth-century documents and 22,189 seventeenth-century documents (counting from 1501 to 1600 and 1601 to 1700).

Again, apparently his principal source is not the database that would show persistence. In determining the Book of Mormon matches Early Modern English bibles, as far as I know from my quick analysis, he is not sufficiently addressing the null, that it may also match post-Early Modern English bibles.

This holds for all of his analyses. If he is primarily using a database of Early Modern English, without checking for similar results in a database from a different time, all he is doing is finding coincidentals, which do not indicatively support his main hypothesis. He has to test the null, which is maybe what happened when they fully checked these results against the ECCO.

Additionally, a note about the ECCO in footnote 8 of this 2/2020 paper:

As mentioned, this characteristic verb agreement of the early modern period became less frequent toward the end of the period (the late 17th century). It would be a time-consuming task to thoroughly verify its demise in the Eighteenth Century Collections Online database, since it isn’t amenable to precise syntactic searches

This I understand. It is one of the issues I have had regarding his archaic vocabulary conclusions. His searches are so limited that he is missing a lot, in my opinion. I'll put an example in my next post.