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

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

Post by malkie »

Lem wrote:
Tue Dec 01, 2020 7:24 pm
Skousen wrote: 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.
Is it just me, or is there some strange use of modern language here? For example:
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]
I know what they are trying to say, and perhaps it's pedantic or churlish of me to complain, but "26 remain archaic" implies that the 26 items have been established as archaic - that is, this looks a lot like begging the question to me.

Based on the latest concessions, would it not be more accurate to assign these 26 items a status of "proposed archaism - not yet overturned"?
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Re: Carmack/Skousen: "Virtually none of the grammatical variants listed in section 4-archaic grammar are archaic."

Post by Physics Guy »

Every item is presumed archaic until proven guilty in a court of law.
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Re: Carmack/Skousen: "Virtually none of the grammatical variants listed in section 4-archaic grammar are archaic."

Post by Gadianton »

Lem wrote: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."
Finally caught up on this thread. That is truly awful reasoning.
Physics Guy wrote:Every item is presumed archaic until proven guilty in a court of law.
Yep, pretty typical of an ambitious theory of Mopologetics to resort to this.
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Re: Carmack/Skousen: "Virtually none of the grammatical variants listed in section 4-archaic grammar are archaic."

Post by Dr Exiled »

I don't know why the brethren allow this to continue. [Brethren, if you are reading this, please, please take heed, tithing receipts are in danger if this plague of a theory is allowed to continue] I guess it is allowed to continue because probably no one knows, relatively, about this crazy theory with certain BYU/BYU realted apologists. So, if I have it correctly, because biblical type language is found in the Book of Mormon printer's addition, supposedly there was a pre-translation by someone or a committee that lived in the Early Modern English/Shakespeare times? Are these guys damned crazy? How will this play with the 25-45 crowd? My guess is that it will turn them off, especially if their non-believing peers discover the theory that is akin to Xenu, thetans, and/or Raëlianism.
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Re: Carmack/Skousen: "Virtually none of the grammatical variants listed in section 4-archaic grammar are archaic."

Post by Lem »

Every time I look at this research, another thing comes up wonky.

The very first phrase from pre-print part 4 that is determined to be evidence the Book of Mormon language is archaic is "drink in with."

This phrase was also in Skousen's NOL, in a section where they were considering whether phrases were original to Joseph Smith, or archaic:
...In this section of NOL, we are not trying to prove that these expressions never existed during Joseph Smith’s time. To the contrary, they did. Instead, our goal here is to find them being used from the mid-1500s up through the mid-1700s. Here are some examples that at first we thought we would not find in that earlier time period; we were wrong: 

....1599, King James VI                     drinking in with their very nourish-milk 
This phrase is now listed as an archaic phrase no longer in use, with this explanation:
Drink in with:

“not long after their dissension / they became more hardened and impenitent and more wild wicked
and ferocious than the Lamanites /drinking in with the traditions of the Lamanites”
(Alma 47:36)

The expression “to drink in with the traditions of the Lamanites” seems to imply absorbing or fully adopting the Lamanite traditions, as if these traditions were a kind of liquor. A similar example of this usage appears to be one by James VI of Scotland, dating from 1599, cited in NOL,
that refers to drinking in “a feck-less arrogant conceit of their greatness and power . . . with their very nurse-milk”, that is, an arrogant conceit absorbed from infancy.
I bolded the partial quote, because in my opinion, the way he partially quoted it then used ellipses to rearrange it disguises what the quote actually says. Here it is:
The natural sickness that I have perceived this estate subject to in my time, hath been, a feckless arrogant conceit of their greatness and power; drinking in with their very nourish-milk, that their honor stood in committing three points of iniquity...
https://www.lorenzburg.org/en/2016/03/1 ... g-james-i/
Maybe a linguist can weigh in, but isn't "with their very nourish-milk" a clause that is separate from the phrase, "drinking in"?

In my opinion, it does NOT seem like a similar example, and it does NOT match the particular Book of Mormon phrase "drinking in with."

The two other examples Carmack and Skousen listed from the 1700s don't seem to match what they are looking for either:
Here are a couple more examples of “to drink in with”, both from ECCO and dating from the early 1700s. The first is more literal and refers to an actual drink (like James VI’s example); the second is metaphorical, like Alma 47:36:

before 1716, John Edwards (died 1716),
Theologia Reformata
[published in 1726]
Among the direful e›ects and consequences of extravagant drinking this must not be
omitted, that the soul and all its faculties are corrupted and debauched by it. False notions
are drunk in with the wine: undue and unbecoming apprehensions are entertained.

1726, Daniel Defoe,
Mere Nature Delineated Will he not drink in with the religion he is like to learn here such horrid and execrable
blasphemies of the God he is taught to fear, as must form incongruous notions of all religion
in his head?
In both these examples, it seems that "drink in" is followed by a clause; "with the wine" or "with the religion."

Of course there are many, many examples of "drink in" followed by a clause starting with "with" in every relevant century, but C&S ignore that, insisting instead that "drink in with" is a full, archaic phrase. Unfortunately, they provide NO evidence that this is the case.

(they do this with at least one other phrase as well; specifically "consigned that," as though adding in a "that" makes it a unique archaic phrase instead of just a non-archaic word.)

To try to understand their point, I looked at the Printer's Manuscript for this Book of Mormon passage, and, to my surprise, found some discrepancies there also. Here is what is actually written in the Printers manuscript:
...relate not long after their dissensions they became more hardened impenitant more wild wicked ferosious than the Lamanites drind < drinking > in with the traditions of the Lama nites giving way to indolence all manner of lasciviousness yea entirely for...
In the handwritten manuscript, "drind" is first written, then stricken out, with a caret inserted and above it written "drinding," then after that in darker ink the "d" is marked as a "k" so the word reads "drinking."

It's very unclear what is intended, but guess who gets to decide what scribe markings to use and which to ignore for the critical text? If you guessed Skousen, you are correct. In this case, to support his archaic theory he kept the scribe's correction, but in a previous case I investigated, in order to support his archaic theory he has rejected the scribe's correction.

The appearance of bias is immense.

And last, look at the full Book of Mormon quote, not just the part Carmack and Skousen have excerpted:
36 Now these dissenters, having the same instruction and the same information of the Nephites, yea, having been instructed in the same knowledge of the Lord, nevertheless, it is strange to relate, not long after their dissensions they became more hardened and impenitent, and more wild, wicked and ferocious than the Lamanites—drinking in with the traditions of the Lamanites; giving way to indolence, and all manner of lasciviousness; yea, entirely forgetting the Lord their God.
The passage seems to clearly imply that the dissenters go beyond the traditions of the Lamanites to a worse place. To truncate this passage in order to imply the dissenters are fully engaging ("drinking in with") the traditions rather than going beyond them seems like a move intended only to support the Early Modern English hypothesis rather than an attempt to truly understand the intent.

Bottom line, Carmack and Skousen have, in my opinion, engaged in a grossly manipulated analysis in order to attempt to continue supporting their archaic hypothesis. It is not credible. Legitimate peer review would have helped considerably.
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Re: Carmack/Skousen: "Virtually none of the grammatical variants listed in section 4-archaic grammar are archaic."

Post by Gadianton »

Reading the two passages with "drinking in", if you didn't approach those examples with the intent to see the big commonality of "drinking in", you'd have a great example of just how different Early Modern English is from English in Joseph Smith's day. When you read "The Late War", what knocks you to the ground is just how familiar the writing is to the Book of Mormon. Whether or not it was directly relied upon, the two books certainly come from the same time and place.

I'd love to see the best example of an Early Modern English text that gives you that same feeling -- holy cow, this is just like reading the Book of Mormon!

My guess is that finding two straight pages of Early Modern English that gives you the Book of Mormon feel is never going to happen.
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Re: Carmack/Skousen: "Virtually none of the grammatical variants listed in section 4-archaic grammar are archaic."

Post by Lem »

Every so often, an MDDer states that the Book of Mormon is early modern English, and Brant Gardner frequently responds with his rebuttal. I have always enjoyed his thoughtful, articulate posts. Here is his latest, where he summarizes quite cleanly several issues with Skousen and Cormack's research.
Brant Gardner
Posted Saturday at 10:04 PM

On 1/16/2021 at 9:19 PM, Robert F. Smith said:
"However, Carmack & Skousen have pretty much pulled the rug out from under that old 19th century notion, since the Book of Mormon appears in Early Modern English. However, that is no defense of the Book of Mormon, but only a further complication."


I disagree. While Skousen and Carmack have found forms that were in printed texts from Early Modern English, their argument entirely rests upon not finding them later than that. Both Skousen and Carmack know that this is not correct, and have indicated in various places that there is even on form in the Book of Mormon that wasn't found until literarure written after 1830. The principle of dating from the latest known dates is not used. They assume the earlier dating, and adjust their arguments to show why one might still accept the Early Modern English Book of Mormon.

The second methodological problem is that they compare the the Book of Mormon (typically) to regular texts, and not to those using pseudo-KJV. That is a smaller sample, but an important one because there were many writers using those forms--and not doing them correctly. Carmack looked at those and concluded that many of them do use the same kind of Early Modern English forms as the Book of Mormon, but there are statistically more in the Book of Mormon. The argument about statistics misses the point. If other contemporaries of Joseph produced those forms when imitating KJV language, then there is no reason to believe that Joseph did not our could not. Statistically, it simply indicates that he made more grammatical mistakes that contemporary writers.

https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/73 ... 1210010893
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Re: Carmack/Skousen: "Virtually none of the grammatical variants listed in section 4-archaic grammar are archaic."

Post by Lem »

Carmack continues to make some remarks about his Early Modern English theory on MD&D, usually in response to Gardner:
Brant Gardner wrote:
Champatsch wrote: I've seen from you so far is that you will take a small amount of linguistic evidence to defend your 2011 thesis. Yet you ignore a large amount of hard linguistic evidence — as strong or stronger than what you study — evidence that leads to a different conclusion, one you disfavor.
And this continues to be the problem. You certainly have a lot of evidence for your thesis, but there are small but substantial problems that you are ignoring rather than either integrating into the thesis, or realizing that they can invalidate the thesis. The major one is the problem of latest date. There are two problems with your data. One is that some of the evidence is later than the Early Modern English hypothesis. The second is that there is an inherent problem with the way the exclusiveness of the data is asserted. It is asserted because it wasn't yet found. Then then you publish articles indicating that some of them have been found. That, of course, is precisely what a scholar should do--but for some reason you don't understand that it continues to undermine the proposal that "Joseph couldn't" when you find that perhaps he could have on some of them. Your hypothesis cannot explain all of the data, and when it falls short of explaining all of the data, it simply cannot be accepted as an explanation.

I suppose a third issue is the idea that a small, but significant percentage of variation from your hypothesis can be dismissed. A fourth would be your own evidence finding similar evidence in the early revelations, but not all revelations. None of those would be translations, and they related to Josephs current situations. There is no need for someone who hasn't learned to keep up with English for 200 years to have given them to him, not to mention the strong evidence that Joseph was very willing to alter them when he thought he needed to communicate the idea better. If your hypothesis only answers one possible question and ignores so many, it isn't very useful.
champatsch wrote: Well, you misrepresent the hypothesis. It is not an early modern hypothesis, strictu sensu. The hypothesis is simply that the original dictation language has so much nonbiblical language that is strongly characteristic of Early Modern English usage — both lexical usage and syntactic patterns and syntactic usage, things which are unattested in pseudobiblical writings or barely attested — that Joseph Smith was not the author or 'translator' (your secondary meaning of translator, from revealed ideas). You're imposing a different hypothesis on our work....
I don't mind the change in theory, he really can't avoid it, but just as a reminder, based on the recent retractions published by the Interpreter, here is the count as it currently stands:

Section 1, Archaic Vocabulary: 26 remain archaic [out of 41, 37% retracted]

Section 3, Archaic Phrases: 14 remain archaic [out of 29, 52% retracted]

Section 4, Archaic Grammar: 2 remain archaic[out of 15, 87% retracted]stics,

Section 7, Archaic Expressions: 7 remain archaic [out of 37, 81% retracted]

For an average of 60% of published results retracted.

Also, the 'problem of latest date,' as Gardner calls it, seems really significant in the dating process, and Carmack really can't seem to address it. My expertise is on the statistical side, and in my opinion, he continues to find disparate coincidences randomly scattered, and exaggerates hugely in his favor with his findings. Like using numerology in a Nostradamus' text, where really creative manipulations are necessary to pull anything out. It's not a good use of statistics.
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Re: Carmack/Skousen: "Virtually none of the grammatical variants listed in section 4-archaic grammar are archaic."

Post by Dr Exiled »

Lem wrote:
Wed Feb 03, 2021 9:10 pm
Carmack continues to make some remarks about his Early Modern English theory on MD&D, usually in response to Gardner:
Brant Gardner wrote:


And this continues to be the problem. You certainly have a lot of evidence for your thesis, but there are small but substantial problems that you are ignoring rather than either integrating into the thesis, or realizing that they can invalidate the thesis. The major one is the problem of latest date. There are two problems with your data. One is that some of the evidence is later than the Early Modern English hypothesis. The second is that there is an inherent problem with the way the exclusiveness of the data is asserted. It is asserted because it wasn't yet found. Then then you publish articles indicating that some of them have been found. That, of course, is precisely what a scholar should do--but for some reason you don't understand that it continues to undermine the proposal that "Joseph couldn't" when you find that perhaps he could have on some of them. Your hypothesis cannot explain all of the data, and when it falls short of explaining all of the data, it simply cannot be accepted as an explanation.

I suppose a third issue is the idea that a small, but significant percentage of variation from your hypothesis can be dismissed. A fourth would be your own evidence finding similar evidence in the early revelations, but not all revelations. None of those would be translations, and they related to Josephs current situations. There is no need for someone who hasn't learned to keep up with English for 200 years to have given them to him, not to mention the strong evidence that Joseph was very willing to alter them when he thought he needed to communicate the idea better. If your hypothesis only answers one possible question and ignores so many, it isn't very useful.
champatsch wrote: Well, you misrepresent the hypothesis. It is not an early modern hypothesis, strictu sensu. The hypothesis is simply that the original dictation language has so much nonbiblical language that is strongly characteristic of Early Modern English usage — both lexical usage and syntactic patterns and syntactic usage, things which are unattested in pseudobiblical writings or barely attested — that Joseph Smith was not the author or 'translator' (your secondary meaning of translator, from revealed ideas). You're imposing a different hypothesis on our work....
I don't mind the change in theory, he really can't avoid it, but just as a reminder, based on the recent retractions published by the Interpreter, here is the count as it currently stands:

Section 1, Archaic Vocabulary: 26 remain archaic [out of 41, 37% retracted]

Section 3, Archaic Phrases: 14 remain archaic [out of 29, 52% retracted]

Section 4, Archaic Grammar: 2 remain archaic[out of 15, 87% retracted]stics,

Section 7, Archaic Expressions: 7 remain archaic [out of 37, 81% retracted]

For an average of 60% of published results retracted.

Also, the 'problem of latest date,' as Gardner calls it, seems really significant in the dating process, and Carmack really can't seem to address it. My expertise is on the statistical side, and in my opinion, he continues to find disparate coincidences randomly scattered, and exaggerates hugely in his favor with his findings. Like using numerology in a Nostradamus' text, where really creative manipulations are necessary to pull anything out. It's not a good use of statistics.
This really should kill the absurd theory once and for all. How did the Early Modern English ghosts know the post ghost english constructions? Magic? If Dr. Carmack won't answer, how about you Dr. P? You have wasted a ton of your donor's money on this silliness. What say ye? Also, why didn't Moroni tell your precious witnesses about the supposed Early Modern English theory that supposedly has Nahom like qualities in your circles? I would think that the holy Early Modern English theory would be worthy of the witnesses? Maybe you need to change up your prescriptions or perhaps that chocolate you love from Nevada is too strong?
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Re: Carmack/Skousen: "Virtually none of the grammatical variants listed in section 4-archaic grammar are archaic."

Post by IHAQ »

This whole piece of work seems tantamount to an acknowledgement that the Book of Mormon isn't what it is currently claimed to be.
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