Causal constructions in the Book of Mormon

[Kishkumen]

So, a new argument for authentic archaic language in the Book of Mormon. The key is causative expressions. They are pretty common in Latin, but not so common in English. They appear in the Book of Mormon an unusually high number of times.

Here is DCP’s description of the piece with a link to the article:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeter ... MkhcEuAnsQ

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

According to one AI god I talk to causation is built into the Hebrew (and Aramaic) verb system. It’s called Hiphi. Also Greek here and there.

It must be hard to be a fibber these days, to bs people who a decade ago would have trouble fact checking you.

[Marcus]

That article was a rough read. Peer review is one thing, but Carmack needs some help with simple editing. In places it reads like he just threw some odd notes into the paper and called it a day. Even his footnotes are confusing.

Also, he seems to be suggesting that the elements under discussion match Late Middle English, not Early Modern English, as he has concluded in most other writings on this subject:

John Bunyan (1628–1688) employed one ditransitive causative in his writings, in The Holy War (1682). It has repeated pronouns but no modal auxiliary: “and you shall cause me that I [ø] dwell securely with you.”38 This did not lead to pseudo-archaic imitation. Thus, there is no support for saying that this ditransitive causative prompted Joseph Smith to imitate it.

Malory’s Late Middle English usage is a closer match with the Book of Mormon’s ditransitive causative modal usage...

So who wrote this thing that ranges back and forth from Late Middle English to Early Modern English to King James English to 19th century English, switching between types of language sentence by sentence, clause by clause, and sometimes even word by word? /s

[Tom]

I’d note a related discussion opened by Marcus here.

[Marcus]

I’d note a related discussion opened by Marcus here.

Thanks for the reminder Tom. Carmack's new paper refers to Davis' paper (discussed in Tom's link above) several times. Even though Davis published it last year, in my opinion Davis' comments about Carmack's methodology are still relevant. From Tom's link:

Davis' paper is critical of Skousen's and Carmack's conclusions, but his concerns about Carmack's methodology, which in my opinion is a far harsher critique, are politely relegated to the footnotes.

Whether or not one chooses to believe that Joseph Smith read any of Bunyan’s stories, the writings themselves were certainly widely accessible and could easily have provided a wide range of templates for many of the Book of Mormon forms.[70]

Mild. But the footnote? Wow.

[ftnote 70] This accessibility of archaic forms speaks to the issue of influence and comparative analysis. Carmack frequently dismisses texts as possible sources of influence based on differing rates of usage from one text to another, but this is a systemic flaw in his analyses.

It is a faulty assumption to argue that two texts must share a similar profile for a given feature in order for one to qualify as a possible source of influence for the other.

Carmack notes, for example, that the periphrastic did rate in the KJV is 1.7 percent, while the Book of Mormon rate is 27.2 percent, prompting him to argue that “the occasional intersection” of KJV and Book of Mormon periphrastic did syntax argues against the KJV as a source of influence: “The rates and patterns of use strongly indicate independence” (Carmack, “Implications of Past-Tense Syntax,” 123, table 2).

This reasoning, however, rests on the faulty premise that the human mind processes language in empirically predictable ways. Yet, the mind does not read a text, isolate a particular feature, calculate the frequency of usage, and then attempt to reproduce that same frequency in a new composition. Rather, the mind is unpredictable, focusing on different linguistic elements and making use of language features in idiosyncratic ways. An individual, for instance, could encounter the unfamiliar periphrastic do in a work, and then, struck by the novelty of the form, latch onto it and use it at a much higher rate of frequency than the source text expresses. These differences would not disqualify the original text from being a source of inspiration. Though the rate of periphrastic did in the KJV is 1.7 percent, this percentage refers to 515 instances of the form (as Carmack indicates in table 2), which would provide an ample resource to observe and mimic.

Grant Hardy raises the same concern: “It seems to me, however, that Carmack does not give adequate consideration to alternative hypotheses: for instance, Joseph may have picked up the do-auxiliary from the King James Bible and then overused it in an idiosyncratic way.” Hardy, Approaching Completion, 15n17.

[spacing added to facilitate reading]

[Marcus]

And just today, Carmack has added a new wrinkle--a British source for another subset of Book of Mormon writings:

Fifth, the Book of Mormon has 70+ examples of pro-form "save it were." Currently, only five original instances are known before 1830, in five British texts. There is also an 1828 northern English example (not pro-form), with a literal it. (The Book of Mormon has four with a literal it.) Pro-form "save it were" is one way of many that the Book of Mormon is more British than American in its English usage....

https://www.mormondialogue.org/forum/11 ... scussions/

Come on, Carmack. This is getting ridiculous.

That ghost committee is becoming more and more eclectic, both across the planet and throughout the ages.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Imagine being a world class Elizabethan scholar and your eternal reward in heaven is proofreading a manuscript for a horny con man in Palmyra. According to Carmack, God’s primary concern during the Restoration was apparently maintaining strict adherence to the linguistic style of William Tyndale. Makes total sense.

[Gadianton]

ghost committee is becoming more and more eclectic

Right, different committee members come from different times.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

ghost committee is becoming more and more eclectic

Right, different committee members come from different times.

If an entire ghost committee translated the book, I’d love to know which member had the "and it came to pass" fetish and how he convinced the other committee members to include it 1,425 times?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Seems to me God likes to surround Himself with “F”-ups. Perhaps it helps Him maintain power…