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

[IHAQ]

The critics of the archaic hypothesis should still be worried.

Well, no. That's not how statistical analysis works. Given the number of incredibly weak arguments supporting remaining archaisms, it's not looking good.

They had to put that scare in to try and maintain funding. Skousen wants Interpreter to continue throwing good donations after bad, I mean, where else will he find people dumb enough to fund such an obvious (arguably apostate) folly? It was interesting that, in a naming of living scholars who had an impact on him, Peterson omitted to mention Skousen.

[Physics Guy]

I'm not sure Carmack understands how telling this statement of his is:

It's at a point where easier ones to track have been determined to be persistent....

Yeah, Carmack needs a cue from the prompter. "Your next line is, 'Wait.'"

[Lem]

One should notice that the shorter the example (individual word meanings and short phrases) the greater the odds that our initial analysis was correct.

Here is one of those uses of statistics that gives rise to the phrase, "lies, damned lies, and statistics."

The four categories that he uses each ended up having a significant amount of archaism revoked, here is the breakdown by category:

Section 1, Archaic Vocabulary: 26 remain archaic, 10 persist into the 1700s or later, 4 are re-created words, and 1 is biblical usage
[26/41 = 63%; 36% archaism overturned]

Section 3, Archaic Phrases: 14 remain archaic, 14 persist into the 1700s or later, and 1 is biblical usage
[14/29 = 48%; 52% archaism overturned]

Section 4, Archaic Grammar: 2 remain archaic, 12 persist into the 1700s or later (2 were identified with citations in NOL), and 1 is biblical usage
[2/15 = 13%; 87% archaism overturned]
Section 7, Archaic Expressions: 7 remain archaic, 27 persist into the 1700s or later (9 were identified with citations in NOL), and 3 are influenced by biblical usage
[7/37 = 19%; 81% archaism overturned]

The first two groups had overturned archaism rates of 36% and 52%. The second two groups had overturned archaism rates of 87% and 81%. Note that the lowest two STILL indicate a massive loss of archaism, and would not likely be indicative of any type of success.

So Skousen is saying that because 36% and 52% are LESS WORSE than 87% and 81%, "the greater the odds [are] that our initial analysis was correct."

It is statements like this that give statistical analysis a bad name.

[Dr Moore]

It is statements like this that give statistical analysis a bad name.

Lemmie, unfortunately giving statistical analysis a bad name is a feature, not a flaw. Those innocent chapel members who read all this garbage analysis, backed up by garbage application of statistics, will have no choice but to take comfort in confirmation bias. All of this nets out to Dumb and Dumber: "you're saying there's a chance." Nothing more is needed for a solid, recyclable Mopologetic.

For an example of this, look no further than FairMormon's (sorry, TITS) own Kwaku video on Archaeology. Nahom, they say, is the most obvious evidence and "there's no debating" that "bullseye evidence." Kwaku and FairMormon can say this because the notion of statistical coincidence of a 3-gram is lost on members and, again, if there's a chance then that's as good as spot on bullseye evidence. (As well as suspension of belief that Joseph may have happened upon a map of the Middle East at some point and noted the existence of Nehem...)

[Lem]

It is statements like this that give statistical analysis a bad name.

...giving statistical analysis a bad name is a feature, not a flaw...

You have uncovered the motto for the Interpreter's peer review!

[Lem]

For an example of this, look no further than FairMormon's (sorry, TITS) own Kwaku video on Archaeology. Nahom, they say, is the most obvious evidence and "there's no debating" that "bullseye evidence." )

Oh my gosh. What the HELL did I just watch? That was bizarre. FairMormon is okay with that bunch of thoughtless idiots using their name? Not that fairmormon has much better of a reputation, but still. There's a limit to self-flagellation, one would think.

[Dr Moore]

I know. Short format vlog + insensitive comedy + bad Mopologetics + heapings of ad hominem. This is the worst of FARMS but without even the attempt at a glaze of academic politeness. These videos are like Charlie Sheen's "WINNING!" world tour. A disastrous mashup that will undoubtedly do more harm than good.

I mean, he even flashes an image of Jeremy Runnell's head and makes a mockery of his baldness. Who authorizes this crap? Last time I looked, the church links to FairMormon and hosts its annual conference at BYU. I cannot imagine that any church leader finds these videos to be "Christlike."

Supposedly Kwaku is a comedian. I guess it's fitting that Fair needs a comedian to land their best punch lines.

[IHAQ]

At it's core, the Skousen/Carmack study is an admission that FAIR, Interpreter etc have concluded that the Church narrative of Joseph Smith translating a set of ancient plates using a seer stone cannot be true. They have seen language within the Book of Mormon that is out of place, it does not fit, it's an anachronism so damaging that they have had to spend hundreds of thousands of donated dollars to come up with an alternative explanation rather than accept the obvious.

They have put themselves in a lose-lose-lose situation.

Lose:
If their project succeeds in demonstrating the likelihood of a ghost committee, then the Church has to disavow a narrative about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith that has been spun for 200 years. The Church has already gone from an image of Joseph translating actual plates, to Joseph reading words off a stone. To go further to a committee of ghosts translating something for Joseph to then read off a stone (when God could simply have done the job Himself in the blink of an eye) would make it a laughing stock within Christianity.

Lose:
If their project fails the damage to the credibility of themselves, FAIR and Interpreter, especially given the funds and time invested, would draw strong scrutiny from investors.

Lose:
If their project fails, they have no answer for the cognitive dissonance that started this whole project, language within the Book of Mormon that marks it out to be not what it is claimed to be.

I hope their project is successful in proving that what the Church (now, post-SouthPark) says was the case, isn't the case. The critical mileage in that will be exponential.

[Lem]

The 4th pre-print has been posted on the Interpreter blog:

by Administration | Dec 2, 2020 | 0 comments

In The Nature of the Original Language [of the Book of Mormon] (hereafter, NOL), Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack indicated that additional research into the language of the Book of Mormon as dictated by Joseph Smith might discover that some of the archaic words, phrases, and expressions identified at the beginning of NOL had also occurred later in the period of Early Modern English. Regrettably, they were hampered at the time by limitations in the Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) database.

But much of that difficulty has since been overcome. Accordingly, Carmack has spent the past year or so reviewing the potentially archaic words, phrases, and expressions discussed in NOL, and, having thoroughly weighed that initial re-analysis, Skousen has now written a fresh report on the subject.

We have already posted pre-prints of their revised discussion of apparently archaic vocabulary at
https://interpreterfoundation.org/blog- ... of-Mormon/,
of proposed archaic phrases at
https://interpreterfoundation.org/blog- ... of-Mormon/
and, most recently, of archaic grammar at
https://interpreterfoundation.org/blog- ... of-Mormon/.

In what follows — the fourth and last installment of this series of pre-prints of material that will appear in part 8 of volume 3 of the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project — Skousen and Carmack report the results of their renewed inquiry into what they had previously identified as archaic expressions. Only a few of the seemingly archaic expressions treated in NOL are purely archaic.

Responding to an email inquiry from me, Royal Skousen provided the following 30 November 2020 summary statement that I include here with his kind permission:

Stanford Carmack and I are doing what we promised we would do in the introduction to The Nature of the Original Language [of the Book of Mormon], namely, to reconsider our findings as the databases got better (especially our access to the texts in ECCO). Here’s the quote from page 10 of NOL:
‘In some cases, it has been difficult to decide which category to place a write-up in, especially when the databases are still not as developed as we would wish. Over time, further advances in the size and variety of the databases may lead us to change the categorization for some of these write-ups.’
So some of the items we thought were archaic (prior to 1740) are not, and we have identified these by citing examples. There is no reason to hide these findings. It should be pointed out that in the last of our four revised parts that [yes, repeat the subordinate conjunction that] many of these expressions were already identified as occurring in the 1700s and early 1800s, up to Joseph Smith’s time. Those examples that we gave explicit citations to in NOL are listed here in part 4 with arrows (there are 9 of them). They were put in that section 7 (Archaic Expressions) to show that they were also archaic. So here is a summary of the shifts in our thinking:
Section 1, Archaic Vocabulary: 26 remain archaic, 10 persist into the 1700s or later, 4 are re-created words, and 1 is biblical usage
Section 3, Archaic Phrases: 14 remain archaic, 14 persist into the 1700s or later, and 1 is biblical usage
Section 4, Archaic Grammar: 2 remain archaic, 12 persist into the 1700s or later (2 were identified with citations in NOL), and 1 is biblical usage
Section 7, Archaic Expressions: 7 remain archaic, 27 persist into the 1700s or later (9 were identified with citations in NOL), and 3 are influenced by biblical usage
One should notice that the shorter the example (individual word meanings and short phrases) the greater the odds that our initial analysis was correct. Grammatical items typically involve singular or plural usage, with syntax playing a role, and the same for expressions.
So the archaic hypothesis still holds, with nearly 50 examples restricted to archaic usage (Early Modern English, 1540s to the 1740s). The databases are out there for others to check. The critics of the archaic hypothesis should still be worried.

These revisions illustrate the care and integrity with which the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project has been conducted from the time it was launched. The Interpreter Foundation is honored to be associated with this effort.

— Dan Peterson


Inserted from <https://interpreterfoundation.org/blog- ... of-Mormon/>

[Tom]

These revisions illustrate the care and integrity with which the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project has been conducted from the time it was launched.

Care and integrity? I'd expect nothing less with $312,000+ poured into the project by the Interpreter Foundation since late 2014. I'm ready to insert my copy of NOL into a industrial-grade woodchipper. As they say, GIGO.