Right on Target!

[_Symmachus]

Scorndog,

I don't think any linguist would see this vernacular theory as "amazing." Is is perfectly banal. I mean, Tocharian A and B were shown to preserve archaic Indo-European features, did you take that as a sign of the supernatural?

And it seems you didn't get the point about orality vs. textuality I already made, that the Book of Mormon is basically an oral text while published comparanda like VH aren't, so your point is moot.

Since you are so skeptical, tell me, what's your explanation for the "archaisms," if not through banal linguistical phenomena that are well-attested?

[_scorndog]

As you know, Symmachus, an author's oral discourse shows up to a degree in any substantial, written text, so the point isn't moot. And there are many who point to VH as influencing Smith heavily. And its author was of the same region and shared some of the same dialectal features. Therefore, what you accept is that Smith's idiolect was very different from the dialect that surrounded him, because there is no relevant, contemporary textual evidence located yet of many lexical items and syntactic features in the text, and the odds are great that a fairly large subset of those will never be found. So you do subscribe to an amazing vernacular theory, which I suppose we could more properly call an amazing idiolect theory. That sort of theory doesn't involve banal linguistic phenomena because proposing that an idiolect is different in many distinct ways from its surrounding dialect is an extraordinary proposal.

[_Symmachus]

As you know, Symmachus, an author's oral discourse shows up to a degree in any substantial, written text, so the point isn't moot. And there are many who point to VH as influencing Smith heavily. And its author was of the same region and shared some of the same dialectal features. Therefore, what you accept is that Smith's idiolect was very different from the dialect that surrounded him, because there is no relevant, contemporary textual evidence located yet of many lexical items and syntactic features in the text, and the odds are great that a fairly large subset of those will never be found. So you do subscribe to an amazing vernacular theory, which I suppose we could more properly call an amazing idiolect theory. That sort of theory doesn't involve banal linguistic phenomena because proposing that an idiolect is different in many distinct ways from its surrounding dialect is an extraordinary proposal.

100 debatable lexical items in a 500 page book and a few syntactical phenomena are not that distinct, especially if you're just using one point of comparison (VH), so even if it were a question of idiolect, it's not necessarily that unusual. But again, from a linguistic point of view, you're putting the cart before the tapir. The Book of Mormon, as all agree, was uttered by Smith, and thus it constitutes evidence not just for his idiolect, but, if he was understood by others in the process and we have no reason to doubt that he was, for his dialect as well. Your point would be relevant if his idiolect were unintelligible to contemporaries, but there is no reason to believe that it was unintelligible.

Again, what's your explanation for these "archaisms"?

[_canpakes]

...In some/many cases it is a marker of language that was naturalistically inaccessible for the dictation...

It strikes me that you must assert Smith to be quite a literate fellow in 1829, familiar with Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, etc., or imagine that his dialect maintained dozens of features found in their writings, some of which were archaic by the time they used them. What is your take on the following?

Scorndog,

You have never explained how language that existed relatively recently prior to Smith and that you term anachronisms have been proven to have absolutely not existed in use within any local area of Smith's habitation, nor spoken by anyone Smith had ever encountered, nor present in any material that Smith had ever read - in other words, how these anachronisms were simply wiped clean from the palette of exposure options... even as we know of their existence today and see their occasional use. Can you explain how you know this?

Alternately, can you explain how exposure to these 'anachronisms' must, by your reckoning, only have been possible via the spiritual transmissions of deceased Middle English-era translators modifying the words of channeled ancient authors of quasi-Iron Age texts, which they then telepathically ported to Smith after either purposefully or sloppily inserting certain anachronisms, as you seem to be suggesting?

[_Symmachus]

Alternately, can you explain how exposure to these 'anachronisms' must, by your reckoning, only have been possible via the spiritual transmissions of deceased Middle English-era translators modifying the words of channeled ancient authors of quasi-Iron Age texts, which they then telepathically ported to Smith after either purposefully or sloppily inserting certain anachronisms, as you seem to be suggesting?

Yes, it's interesting how Scorndog describes any view that posits indirect influence or persistent archaism as an "amazing theory" that just puts credulity to severe strain, but s/he seems to think it hard-nosed, evidence-based, and unbiased to imply that Elizabethan poets were miraculously channeled via supernatural aid in order to render a bronze age text written on gold plates into utterly artless English and lifelessly formulaic prose.

Isn't marvelous? Isn't wonderful?

I look forward to a clarification of what s/he thinks is the most plausible explanation, since Scorndog finds that the explanation that 100% of non-Mormon linguists would offer simply requires too much faith.

[_zeezrom]

Dear Symmachus,

Why do you say Bronze Age when according to the account (all except Jaredites), we are clearly looking at post-Bronze Age?

...render a bronze age text written on gold plates...

[_Symmachus]

Dear Symmachus,

Why do you say Bronze Age when according to the account (all except Jaredites), we are clearly looking at post-Bronze Age?

Uh, I don't know, a slip I guess. But does it make a difference anyway in terms of Joseph Smith's being divinely inspired in a few cases to ape Spencerian diction? I think not.

[_zeezrom]

Dear Symmachus,

Why do you say Bronze Age when according to the account (all except Jaredites), we are clearly looking at post-Bronze Age?

Uh, I don't know, a slip I guess. But does it make a difference anyway in terms of Joseph Smith's being divinely inspired in a few cases to ape Spencerian diction? I think not.

I thought maybe you intended to imply that there is a Book of Mormon Bronze Age I wasn't aware of or something.

It was a picky question but I've been interested in this stuff lately.

[_Stumpy Pepys]

Giddianhi III Nephi 3:9 Gideon (Judges 6:11)
Gidgiddoni III Nephi 3:18 Giddianhi (III Nephi 3:9)
Giddonah Alma 10:2 Megiddon (Zechariah 12:11)
Middoni Alma 20:2 Midian (Genesis 25:2)

and there's probably more variations of "gid" and "ian" and "oni" and "oniha"...
http://www.lds-mormon.com/names.shtml


I think constructing Book of Mormon names for Joseph Smith was probably a little bit like making tossed Bible name-salad, feeding bits of bible-ish syllables into a random generatoror, or playing with name legos. The Lego bricks are different parts of Bible names and places, local Native American place names, etc, with these words chopped up into suffixes middle and prefixes, and stuck together with a little imagination. I have seen work on Book of Mormon names, lists of Book of Mormon and Bible names, and I have never seen anything from the Book of Mormon that could not be readily made up in this way.

When you take into account just how many Book of Mormon names are obviously re-ordered chunks of other words, words that we know have ancient origins, I think that it would be almost impossible to find that NONE of them closely resembled some real language construct somewhere in the ancient world. In fact, why are there not more "bullseyes" than Gidgiddoni?

[_scorndog]

Symmachus, I didn't say 100 lexical items and a few syntactic features. Said 100+ of lexical and syntactic, leaving unspecified how many of each. In effect you are stipulating that the OED is wrong about many meanings declared to be obsolete, that they were part of upstate NY or New England dialect. Yet as you know, Symm, some of those declarations are correct. Not all of them will be ruled out by examination of new corpora. And some of the obsolescence preceded colonization. So you are left with an idiolect theory in which the idiolect differs substantively from the dialect.

As you know "but if" is an example of a short phrase that sounds understandable to the scribe, but which conveys an obsolete meaning. The same can be said of departed = 'divide' (intr.) and many others. On their face the words are understandable -- it's the particular meaning that is different and obsolete. So the dictated obsolete words were current English words but with old meaning. Since you scorn the language as artless and lifeless, then you likewise scorn past literary giants such as Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, and Swift, since some of their language is found in the text, as Skousen pointed out with Mosiah 7:1, shown above, and as is known from the well-known Hamlet plagiarism, etc.