Book of Mormon (er, -- of Solomon)

[_Brackite]

Sorry, Roger, I am simply not interested in having this discussion with you again.

Ben

Hi Ben,

Will You be interested in Posting a Message within my Isaiah Within The Book of Mormon: Discussion Thread in the Celestial Forum?

[_Roger]

Ben wrote:

Sorry, Roger, I am simply not interested in having this discussion with you again.

When did we ever have this discussion before? This is the first time I've seen these numbers so I don't see how we could have had this discussion previously.

You posted some numbers that seem to be indicating a possible correlation between Warren & Spalding--unless I'm totally missing the point. All I am asking is what conclusion can be drawn from your numbers?

You state:

As you can see though, in the first 15 pages, the results I think justify my position.

What position?

[_Uncle Dale]

...

You state:

As you can see though, in the first 15 pages, the results I think justify my position.

What position?

As best I understand it, Ben's position is that we can expect to find shared
vocabulary and shared phraseology in nearly all narrative texts we might
care to examine. In other words, we can compare Spalding's use of language
with other near-contemporary texts (or vice versa) and discover relatively
high percentages of shared language, here and there.

But, as perhaps you will recall, that was not the purpose of my reporting
in this thread. My main purpose here (and in the companion thread), was
to point out that where I am discovering relatively high values for shared
language, for Spalding and the Book of Mormon, are the SAME PLACES that Jockers
has discovered relatively high word-print values for Spalding in the Book of Mormon.

Ben's assessment goes rather along these lines:

Dale says he found some black rocks out in the gravel pile.
I looked in the same gravel pile and found black rocks also.
Therefore, Dale's discovery means nothing.

My assessment goes along alternative lines:

Jockers says he found tall stacks of black rocks at locations A, B, C and D,
but not at any other locations in the gravel pile.

I closed my eyes, felt about for large stacks, and found them at A, B, C, and D.
Those were the only tall stacks of black rocks in the gravel pile.
Therefore, my discovery might be meaningful.


If, on the other hand, frequently occurring non-contextual words are
actually "contextual," then Ben has made a good point.

If "word-prints" just naturally correlate with certain language use
(no matter the author of either), then my discovery is meaningless.

I say that it is improbable that Spalding's "word-print" in the Book of Mormon would
just happen, by coincidence, to overlay very closely with the shared language.

But Ben can begin to disprove my conclusion, by showing us that Ms. Warren's
"word-print" in the Oberlin MS, does NOT correspond with patterns of her
shared language with Spalding, in that same Oberlin MS. Or, he can show
us examples of correlations of her "word-print" and her shared language
with Spalding (which mean nothing, because she did not write the Oberlin MS).

I suppose that Ben will eventually present us with findings of that sort.

?????

UD

[_Benjamin McGuire]

Dale writes:

With your automated computer program, could you not develop the data for matching the 1830 Book of Mormon text directly with the Spalding text, in a matter of a few hours? We could then fill in the Spalding chart, to see if it had any noticeable distribution patterns of shared language with the Book of Mormon (or with Warren, etc.)

Yes. It's not entirely automated. Perhaps the most time consuming part is breaking the text into the appropriate sized pieces.

In the approach that you take, sample sizes really aren't that much of an issue - just tending to level out as the sample sizes get larger (this ought to be as expected - since we will limit towards the averaged).

I thought I would address one other point. We know of texts that are related. Warren's history is one of three histories that borrows quite liberally from two other historians. One of these is Ramsay's histories (he did a history of the revolutionary war and a history of George Washington). When we compare Warren to Ramsay, we get something very, very different to the kinds of results we see for the Book of Mormon and Spalding text comparisons.

There are roughly 2,200 unique three word phrases in common between the Book of Mormon and Spalding's manuscript, and a 40% vocabulary overlap for the entire text (this includes all uniqe proper nouns) - this roughly 40% goes in both directions despite the fact that the Book of Mormon is much, much longer than Spalding's manuscript. What Dale has done is to point out that in certain parts of these books have a higher correlation (although this has been entirely directional - what he hasn't done yet that probably ought to be done is to go the other route to see if the Book of Mormon is more like certain parts of Spalding than other parts). This 2,200 figure amounts to roughly 6.4% of all unique 3 word phrases in Spalding and about 1.5% of all the unique 3 word phrases in the Book of Mormon. Part of the reason for this discrepancy is the difference in size between the manuscripts.

There are only about 450 unique shared 4 word phrases between Spalding and the Book of Mormon. This accounts for 1.2% and 0.2% respectively. Again, the gap is due in part to the size of the texts. These are unique phrases. Dale's numbering doesn't consider this aspect. For him, all instances are counted (this isn't a bad thing though in the way that he looks at the page). For example, the 4 word phrase "at the head of" occurs 12 times in both texts. While "by the hand of" occurs only once in Spalding, and 47 times in the Book of Mormon. "To the land of" occurs once in Spalding but 91 times in the Book of Mormon. Spalding's text is not as repetitive and is not that long, so this is also perhaps somewhat expected.

Having said that, we can compare Warren with Ramsay's Life of George Washington which I can do quickly because I already have the normalized data. And just looking at over all numbers, the differences are rather amazing.

Warren is about as long as the Book of Mormon. Ramsay is about two to three times the length of Spalding (but nowhere near the length of either Warren or the Book of Mormon). The results:

Vocabulary overlap: Warren has just under 50% of the vocabulary of Ramsay. In the other direction, the number jumps to an astonishing 80% (note that this indicated borrowing in the direction of Warren - Warren borrows from Ramsay and so most of Ramsay's vocabulary is in Warren).

3 Word locutions: 11,400+ (this is far more than the 2,100+ between the Book of Mormon and Spalding).

By percentage, 5.1% of the unique 3 word phrases in Warren's text are found in Ramsay, with an amazing 15.2% of unique three word phrases from Ramsay in Warren. This compared to the 6.4% and 1.5% for the Book of Mormon and Spalding comparison. By way of another comparison, Warren and Spalding's comparative numbers are 10.2% and 1.5% respectively. And the Book of Mormon compared with Jules Verne's book comes in at 4.8% and 1.6% respectively as well.

And for 4 word phrases? Between Warren and Ramsay, there are 3,700+ common unique 4 word phrases (compared to the 450 between the Book of Mormon and Spalding) - that's 1.3% and 4.4% of the totals (remember for the Book of Mormon and Spalding these numbers were 1.2% and 0.2% respectively).

Now these numbers need to be adjusted a bit to put them into the same kind of perspective that Dale gives the issue here. That 3,700 unique phrases in common represent (including duplicates) roughly 5,400 phrases in Ramsay and 9,500 phrases in Warren. So, using my 15 pages of Spalding as a guide (using 162 words as an average word count per page), this would make a document roughly 540 pages long. Put into that the 5426 tabulated shared 4 word phrases, and we get an average of roughly 10 such strings per page. Reducing that to the ratio that Dale used (10:162) we get 6.17%. Now, add this to the over all vocabulary overlap. The figure I gave above of 80% represents all unique vocabulary. Since the unique words will be a small minority, we can figure the overlap in terms of total words. In doing this we note that while there are 1483 unique vocabulary words in Ramsay that are not in Warren, the total number of words represented by these 1483 terms is on 2,655 words (most of them are actually unique). Divide this into the total number of words in the text (87,433), and we get an overall percentage of 97% overlap in words.

Add these two numbers together - 96.96% and 6.12% and we get 103.08%. That will be the overall AVERAGE expected value on Dale's scale for each and every page of Ramsay's text when compared to Warren's text. Assuming any kind of variance, it wouldn't be surprising to get single pages as high as 110-115% or perhaps even more.

My point here (and this is also for Roger) - Dale's figures are not that significantly high. They don't show the kinds of numbers I would expect to see with deliberate borrowing. Now there are, I am sure, plenty of way for Spalding theorists to deal with this particular perception, but my point remains that there will always be an apparently significant overlap between texts, and that this isn't unexpected or particularly noteworthy. Part of what makes it look significant is that most people who look at this kind of data don't have any expectation of results from pulling lots of texts together and looking at them.

It is more troublesome in this case (Dale's argument) that the criteria for the connection is the statistical model. In other words, in any particular comparison between two texts, some pages will be more like a plausible source than other pages - purely by coincidence. In the above Ramsay/Warren example, I am sure that there are going to be significant variations between individual pages of Ramsay (should I take the time to parse it into 162 word sections, we could even determine this). But, the over all averages will be what I calculated. If you want to take the data describing the relationship between Spalding and the Book of Mormon and use it to break the Book of Mormon up into sections that are the most like Spalding, you create something of a circular argument. Only in assuming that the most Spalding-like chapters represent an underlying Spalding text can you create the data that naturally agrees with this assumption.

My own look at this kind of statistical analysis suggests that the difference between finding Spalding as a source for the Book of Mormon and finding the English translation of Jules Verne's book as the source for the Book of Mormon is virtually non-existent. The only way to bring the Spalding material into more relevance is to do what Dale has done, and isolate those sections of the Book of Mormon that are the most Spalding like. There is a down side to this. When the most Spalding-like material is removed, the rest of the Book of Mormon develops an almost anti-Spalding look and feel.

And there is one more issue. Dale looks at the Book of Mormon in small sections compared to the Spalding manuscript. But taking it the other way (Spalding by page to the Book of Mormon) reveals an entirely different kind of look. Dale asked about that one page way on the bottom with only 80% overlapping vocabulary (in my numbers). Here are the words on that Spalding page (12) not in Warren:

antic, barking, brains, capers, croaking, dancing, devils, distortions, frogs, furies, gestures, jumping, medley, owls, screaming (x2), screeching, shouting, topsy, tumbling, turvy, uproar (x2), whooping (x2), whoops, wolves

Now, how many of these words are in the Book of Mormon? It's an interesting question. The second lowest frequency page in Spalding used these words not in Warren:

anchored, billows, buxom, dames, devotions, droll, firma, foaming, furled, hark, huge, Jesus, keeled, longing, mariner, mate, neptune, rosy, shipmates, sturgeon, terra, tom, tossed, trojanus, ye

(I think I missed some proper nouns there ...) Hopefully you get my point here. The Book of Mormon has a tiny vocabulary for a book of its length. When looked at with this kind of analysis, it has a fairly high degree of overlap. But, we can all look at your pages and see that the majority of that overlap is in fairly common words. But, the Book of Mormon also doesn't use a majority of the language which Spalding uses. And outside of this kind of statistical analysis which tends to ignore the Spalding material not found in the Book of Mormon, we have a Book of Mormon which really doesn't look or read like Spalding. And once we arrive at the conclusion that the statistical numbers Dale is producing aren't as good as they look, well, my point is that there isn't much of a reason from this kind of a study to actually conclude borrowing at all.

All texts have some correlation Roger. Not some, all of them do. If you want, we can produce some tests completely randomly. We will find that content and subject matter makes a difference. But not perhaps as much as you thing. A common millieu will have far greater impact. The hundred most common words for a time and place will still be the hundred most common words - and you will tend to find them in all authors covering all subject matter. This is one of the reasons why it is these kinds of common words that are used in word print studies (including Criddle's) and not the kinds of words that we think are much more significant.

Ben M.

[_Uncle Dale]

...
All texts have some correlation
...

I've recently been separating texts along the lines of structure -- that is:
a narrative text is something generally different from a dialogue text, or a
reproduction of correspondence by letter, etc.

We would not expect to see much "correlation" between the Book of Mormon
and a cook-book, nor with a treatise on algebra.

It stands to reason that two texts written in early 19th century American
vernacular, narrating troops movements and battles would have more
"correlation," than with a religious sermon or an epistle, respectively.

And so we see that the Book of Mormon contains various types of texts,
when we divide it up by its varying structural elements. There are historical
narratives, editorial "asides" to the reader, epistles, sermons, descriptions,
biographical sketches (or summaries), short elegies, etc.

My guess is that the highest "correlations" will come when we compare the
same structural elements we see in the Book of Mormon with similar structural excerpts
from other near-contemporary texts. By "near-contemporary," I mean texts
written or published in the early 19th century English vernacular we find in
the Book of Mormon -- not its reproductions of Isaiah chapters, etc.

We may get a misleading view of things, if we attempt to report how much a
certain text does or does not resemble the Book of Mormon as a whole. The
Book of Mormon is a library of individual books, as well as a compilation of all
the various structural elements I just mentioned. While we can compare
other texts to it as a whole (the full context), we may also find instances
where it is logical to report how various texts resemble parts of that book
(or its sub-contexts).

Thus, while I'm happy to see statistics relating information compared with
or calculated from the Book of Mormon as a whole, I am more interested in those same
results, taken from certain sections of its text. The latter part of Alma, etc.

A basic premise of the Spalding-Rigdon authorship theory, is that the Book of Mormon
is a complex text, written by at least two authors, incorporating biblical
and other sub-texts. If that is truly the case, then statistical reports for
correlations of word-prints, vocabulary, phraseology, grammar, etc., for
the book as a whole will misleading.

Even considering the traditional Latter Day Saint explanations for the book's
authorship, such attempted correlations with the entire text would be rather
misleading -- by lumping together the "small plates of Nephi," the abridgment
of Mormon, Moroni's writings, Moroni's rendition of Ether, etc.

I have just about completed a "blank" chart for the entire 171 pages of the
Oberlin Spalding MS -- extending the excerpt I posted here earlier. If it is
useful for graphically reporting some of your mathematical tabulations, I
can copy it here, or post it elsewhere and provide you with a URL.

Dale

[_Benjamin McGuire]

Dale writes:

We may get a misleading view of things, if we attempt to report how much a certain text does or does not resemble the Book of Mormon as a whole.

But, it is a single text also. And I think that we need to be very careful about forgetting that particular issue. It is very easy for us to tear the text in sections - but then it starts to become a sequence of statistics instead of a crafted rhetorical piece written by an author(s), with a purpose.

The other thing to think about is that your suggestion that a cookbook or an algebra primer would be substantially different is only partially true. In the comparison I made between Warren and Ramsay, I pointed out that 20% of the vocabulary in Ramsay amount for 3% of the actual word count. Of the 7,351 total unique vocabulary words in Ramsay, 2,935 of them only occur once. Another 1,231 occur only twice. At the other end of the spectrum, the five most frequently occurring words occur a combined total of 19,950 times (out of a total word count of 87,433). That's just under 23% - but its quite an astonishing number, don't you think? Those words? "In", "And", "To", "Of", and "The". Right off the list of the top 100 used words in English. If we expand that list to the top 25 - we get 40% of the wordage of that text. If we go with the top 100 words? We get to 55%. Those 100 words are going to occur with regularity in cookbooks, in algebra books, and so on. Yes, there will be some peculiarities. And yes, the correlation will not be so high on average. But, on some level, even with minimal unique vocabulary overlap there will be a huge overlap in shared words.

[_Uncle Dale]

...its quite an astonishing number, don't you think?

Many things new are astonishing. Much of this textual comparison study is new to
me, so I am bound to be astonished now and then.

I disagree with you, that we should primarily be looking at the Book of Mormon
as a whole. Unless you are ready to conclude that most of the language is
that of Joseph Smith, then we are looking at a library of texts from a variety
of writers, purportedly composed over a time-span of thousands of years. There
is no reason to assume that Zeniff, Isaiah and Ether all wrote with a common
language, or even a common purpose. Once outside of the "small plates of Nephi,"
however, Mormon's editorial hand might be appealed to as a unifying literary
constraint -- both in terms of textual selection and redaction.

But, on some level, even with minimal unique vocabulary overlap there will be a
huge overlap in shared words.

I'm never quite sure how to view assessments such as "huge." Like I said, I'm
new at this work -- having only dabbled in intuitive "eyeball" comparisons a
few times in the past. I use words like "huge" myself -- but then wonder what
standard I'm using to say such things.

The more data we can amass, in a controlled sort of way, the better prepared
I'll be to say whether some phenomenon is significant or not.

You mention an upper limit of about 450 word-strings of four sequential and
contiguous words, shared by the Book of Mormon and Spalding. If it's not
asking too much, could you post them here (or mail me the list)? I'm left to
wonder how many I've missed finding, using less sophisticated means.

UD

[_MCB]

While looking at writer style, in term of word-strings and shrunken centroids can be important, looking at substories and overall plots also have their place. Both need to back each other up to clinch the argument. Word strings may have been replicated in the language of the day, and appear commonly in the literature of the day.

Looking also at those substories, and finding parallels in other literature can also be fruitful. And for that, we would be looking at a whole library of late 1700 and early 1800 literature, and translations of older literature, which includes some valuable and rare books. And that all takes a lot of work even though the technique need not be terribly sophisticated.

OK. Back to reading mode. ;)

[_Benjamin McGuire]

Here is the rough list (be aware that this may have errors due to the source electronic document I used at the time - I haven't used your corrected e-text for this particular part):

a_church_in_the
a_great_number_of
a_knowledge_of_their
a_manner_that_the
a_narrow_strip_of
a_part_of_the
a_perfect_knowledge_of
a_sufficient_quantity_of
a_thousand_of_the
a_vast_number_of
above_all_the_other
against_them_they_were
all_the_arts_of
all_the_inhabitants_of
all_the_proceedings_of
all_these_things_which
among_the_people_in
an_account_of_the
an_army_of_thirty
and_some_in_another
are_more_numerous_than
army_of_thirty_thousand
army_to_destroy_them
arts_of_war_and
as_a_token_of
as_far_as_the
as_for_those_who
as_if_it_had
as_many_of_them
as_well_as_in
as_well_as_the
at_the_city_of
at_the_feet_of
at_the_head_of
at_the_place_of
at_the_same_time
at_the_time_that
at_the_time_they
at_this_time_when
atonement_made_for_the
bank_of_the_river
be_esteemed_as_the
be_for_the_benefit
be_received_into_the
been_the_cause_of
both_sides_of_the
broke_down_the_door
buildings_of_every_kind
by_the_assistance_of
by_the_hand_of
by_the_side_of
by_the_sword_of
carried_off_by_the
cast_his_eyes_upon
cause_of_their_country
covered_with_the_bodies
crying_with_a_loud
darkness_of_the_night
did_not_tarry_in
end_of_the_world
every_part_of_the
face_of_the_earth
fall_into_the_hands
fallen_by_the_sword
fell_into_their_hands
fled_to_the_army
for_a_moment_but
for_the_abundance_of
for_the_benefit_of
for_the_blood_of
for_the_instruction_of
for_the_loss_of
for_the_purpose_of
for_the_sake_of
for_the_space_of
for_the_support_of
for_the_want_of
for_their_support_but
for_them_if_they
for_those_who_shall
from_the_eyes_of
from_the_ground_to
from_the_right_to
from_the_top_of
from_this_time_the
great_was_the_joy
had_been_in_the
had_fallen_by_the
had_taught_them_to
he_cast_his_eyes
he_is_the_most
he_marched_with_the
he_put_forth_his
he_was_in_the
he_went_from_one
him_that_he_should
him_with_his_own
his_army_in_the
his_right_hand_and
i_found_that_it
i_had_ever_seen
i_will_go_with
if_he_should_command
if_it_had_been
in_a_profound_sleep
in_a_state_of
in_any_part_of
in_defence_of_their
in_his_hand_he
in_his_right_hand
in_peace_to_their
in_the_cause_of
in_the_center_of
in_the_city_of
in_the_course_of
in_the_defence_of
in_the_destruction_of
in_the_earth_but
in_the_first_place
in_the_form_of
in_the_knowledge_of
in_the_midst_and
in_the_midst_of
in_the_power_of
in_the_same_manner
in_the_way_of
in_this_manner_they
in_this_part_of
into_a_den_of
into_the_camp_of
into_the_city_and
into_the_city_of
into_the_hands_of
into_the_heart_of
into_the_midst_of
is_the_father_of
is_the_king_of
is_the_man_who
it_had_been_the
it_is_necessary_that
it_shall_be_done
it_shall_be_the
it_shall_be_to
it_was_because_the
it_was_impossible_for
it_was_in_a
judges_who_were_to
keep_all_these_things
left_to_guard_the
listen_to_my_words
loss_of_blood_they
manage_the_affairs_of
march_towards_the_land
marched_with_the_remainder
more_numerous_than_the
more_than_four_hundred
my_father_and_my
narrow_passage_which_led
no_part_of_the
not_in_the_least
of_all_things_from
of_every_kind_of
of_him_was_his
of_his_father_for
of_my_father_but
of_the_army_of
of_the_city_the
of_the_destruction_of
of_the_earth_the
of_the_head_of
of_the_king_his
of_the_king_of
of_the_king_to
of_the_kingdom_of
of_the_multitude_in
of_the_people_against
of_the_people_and
of_the_people_for
of_the_people_in
of_the_sons_of
of_the_whole_multitude
of_this_people_that
of_those_of_the
of_those_people_who
of_those_who_are
of_those_who_had
of_you_that_i
off_his_head_with
off_the_head_of
on_both_sides_of
on_the_fifth_day
on_the_fourth_day
on_the_left_of
on_the_part_of
on_the_second_day
on_the_tenth_day
one_half_of_the
one_of_the_most
our_arms_that_we
out_of_the_city
over_the_face_of
part_of_the_city
peace_to_their_own
people_in_every_city
perfect_knowledge_of_all
place_they_should_be
point_of_his_sword
pursued_them_with_his
put_forth_his_hand
ready_to_receive_the
return_to_the_city
right_to_the_left
rights_of_their_country
save_them_from_the
seasons_of_the_year
set_at_liberty_but
shall_be_taken_from
shall_be_turned_into
shall_make_known_the
shall_rejoice_in_the
should_fall_into_the
should_pursue_them_as
side_of_the_river
sides_of_the_river
so_long_as_the
son_of_the_king
son_whose_name_was
speed_for_they_were
stained_with_the_blood
take_possession_of_their
that_every_man_might
that_he_himself_should
that_he_should_do
that_he_was_not
that_his_children_should
that_i_am_a
that_i_could_not
that_i_shall_be
that_is_in_the
that_it_had_been
that_it_may_be
that_it_should_be
that_it_was_impossible
that_it_was_their
that_it_would_be
that_there_should_be
that_they_might_gain
that_they_shall_be
that_they_should_make
that_they_should_march
that_they_were_good
that_they_were_not
that_they_will_be
that_we_are_not
that_we_shall_be
that_we_should_not
the_army_of_the
the_arts_of_war
the_assistance_of_his
the_astonishment_of_the
the_bank_of_the
the_beginning_of_the
the_benefit_of_the
the_blood_of_his
the_blood_of_our
the_blood_of_the
the_blood_of_your
the_bodies_of_the
the_camp_of_the
the_cause_of_all
the_cause_of_his
the_cause_of_their
the_center_of_the
the_center_of_their
the_city_he_was
the_course_of_their
the_darkness_of_the
the_destruction_of_all
the_destruction_of_their
the_eldest_daughter_of
the_eldest_son_of
the_excellent_qualities_of
the_face_of_it
the_face_of_the
the_faces_of_the
the_father_of_all
the_father_of_the
the_field_of_battle
the_first_place_he
the_form_of_a
the_government_of_the
the_great_anxiety_of
the_great_city_of
the_greatest_number_of
the_hand_of_the
the_head_of_my
the_head_of_the
the_heart_of_their
the_hill_which_was
the_history_of_the
the_inhabitants_of_the
the_inhabitants_who_were
the_joy_of_the
the_king_all_the
the_king_and_his
the_king_of_the
the_knowledge_of_their
the_land_of_our
the_midst_of_a
the_midst_of_the
the_minds_of_the
the_name_of_the
the_nature_of_the
the_object_of_his
the_one_half_of
the_part_of_the
the_people_after_them
the_people_did_not
the_people_for_the
the_people_in_all
the_people_in_every
the_people_who_were
the_place_of_his
the_place_of_their
the_place_where_the
the_place_where_they
the_point_of_his
the_power_of_their
the_power_of_your
the_purpose_of_burying
the_rear_of_the
the_reception_of_the
the_remainder_of_his
the_remainder_of_the
the_remaining_part_of
the_rest_of_the
the_right_to_the
the_rights_of_their
the_son_and_the
the_sons_of_the
the_soul_of_man
the_souls_of_the
the_space_of_four
the_success_of_the
the_sword_of_the
the_time_of_their
the_top_of_the
the_waters_of_the
the_welfare_of_the
the_words_of_truth
the_words_which_they
the_works_of_men
the_works_of_the
their_course_towards_the
their_god_they_shall
their_march_that_it
their_march_towards_the
their_own_land_and
them_according_to_the
them_if_they_had
them_no_time_to
them_that_he_had
them_with_all_the
there_can_be_no
there_is_a_great
there_was_a_great
these_things_which_were
they_could_no_longer
they_could_not_be
they_fell_to_the
they_had_obtained_by
they_have_lost_their
they_knew_not_the
they_shall_not_be
they_threw_down_their
they_were_commanded_by
this_part_of_the
this_people_that_they
this_was_the_case
those_who_had_been
those_who_were_the
to_a_state_of
to_be_true_and
to_believe_in_the
to_bury_the_dead
to_bury_their_dead
to_cross_the_river
to_defend_himself_against
to_defend_themselves_against
to_destroy_his_life
to_enter_the_city
to_gain_advantage_over
to_guard_them_from
to_lay_down_their
to_meet_them_they
to_partake_of_the
to_take_possession_of
to_the_army_of
to_the_city_of
to_the_hill_which
to_the_knowledge_which
to_the_land_of
to_the_nature_of
to_the_number_of
to_the_order_of
to_the_words_of
to_the_words_which
to_their_own_land
to_wait_for_the
to_walk_in_the
towards_the_city_of
towards_the_land_of
upon_the_rear_of
upon_their_own_heads
us_that_we_should
was_covered_with_the
was_prepared_for_the
was_the_eldest_son
was_the_joy_of
was_the_name_of
we_are_in_the
we_came_to_the
we_should_fall_into
we_were_obliged_to
were_conducted_by_the
were_it_not_for
were_not_discovered_by
were_on_the_same
were_placed_in_the
when_the_night_had
which_had_not_been
which_have_been_written
which_he_had_been
which_he_had_done
which_led_to_the
which_was_to_be
who_fell_into_their
who_had_formed_a
who_is_the_father
who_led_on_the
who_should_attempt_to
who_was_the_eldest
will_avenge_their_wrongs
with_a_loud_voice
with_all_their_might
with_his_army_to
with_his_whole_army
with_the_assistance_of
with_the_blood_of
with_the_bodies_of
with_the_remainder_of
with_you_in_the
would_have_been_more
you_shall_be_the
you_that_i_am

[_Benjamin McGuire]

On another note, Dale, you wrote:

I disagree with you, that we should primarily be looking at the Book of Mormon as a whole. Unless you are ready to conclude that most of the language is that of Joseph Smith, then we are looking at a library of texts from a variety of writers, purportedly composed over a time-span of thousands of years. There is no reason to assume that Zeniff, Isaiah and Ether all wrote with a common language, or even a common purpose. Once outside of the "small plates of Nephi," however, Mormon's editorial hand might be appealed to as a unifying literary constraint -- both in terms of textual selection and redaction.

I think you missed my point. So let me clarify. I don't think that its an issue of "primarily", but rather to see the text as narrative. It has at least a certain amount of coherence as the story it is trying to present. Taking chapters here and there out of it and saying - these are Spalding, and these are Rigdon, and so on, tends to take us away from the narrative that it is. Someone (or someones) put this together, and we need to remember this as we analyze the text. This is true for multiple positions on authorship. If we want to talk about the history of the text, of possible urtexts and so on, we simply cannot carve it up and have that be the end of the story. I think that you are aware of this, and agree with me on it in essence.

In terms of the language part - "Unless you are ready to conclude that most of the language is that of Joseph Smith" - I think I have to be very careful with what I mean. Under some interpretations, I can agree with this entirely (several interpretations actually). Two of them might be:

1) Joseph Smith is the intended audience of the Book of Mormon. Thus, the language of the Book of Mormon is tailored to the language that he knows - that is, "most of the language is that of Joseph Smith".
2) Joseph Smith as translator is using words that he knows to translate the text - that is, "most of the language is that of Joseph Smith".
And variations on those themes. Anything that suggests that Joseph is responsible (indirectly or directly) for the vocabulary and grammar and so on.

If you mean that most of the narrative originates with Joseph Smith and is thus his language (he is its creator), then no, that isn't something I would agree with.

Unfortunately, it is both difficult and necessary to be concise on an issue like this. And, I am pretty sure most LDS don't even remotely begin to think about the text in these kinds of ways.