Interesting EMOD thread @ MAD

[Guest]

I think that's right. So unfortunately I can't help suspecting that Carmack and Skousen are being competent linguistic technicians but are making a very basic mistake as linguists, by misunderstanding what it means for grammar to be unconscious. Just because Early Modern English grammar had ceased to be a vernacular grammar in Joseph Smith's day just does not mean at all that it was neurophysiologically impossible for Smith to generate utterances with a similar grammar to that of Early Modern English. He would know with unconscious instinct that this grammar wasn't right for his own native dialect, but he would still be perfectly able to speak it.

At least that's my understanding. I'm not a linguist, but I've hung out with linguists quite a lot. Skousen and Carmack have lent their names to strong claims about how Joseph Smith could not possibly have produced Early Modern English grammar, but my impression is that if they were to state these strong claims among other linguists, they'd get strange looks and skeptical queries.

I suppose another possibility is that Carmack and Skousen themselves are not guilty of this basic misunderstanding but they are keeping mum while enthusiastic fans of theirs commit it because without that misunderstanding most of the interest in their work would disappear, and they like the applause.

[_candygal]

Within the last few weeks, I've been home to Texas,where my Texan twang returned stronger than ever, come back to France to speak French again, spoken regular English with a missionary from Florida, visited Edinburgh where I started to unconsciously mimic the accents and the constant, "No worries," described a cosmological concept in mathematical terms, and spoken broken German with another reddit poster. I'm not that unique. People change their speech to fit their surroundings and audience, they can temporarily influenced by something they read or hear, or be changed forever.

This EMOD occurrence is within the range of normal human behavior.

I do this language thing when I read different books...after the Book of Mormon..I went around and looked at people and said...What say ye???? Same way with books by Twain..sometimes just couldn't shake it. I have had people ask me if I was from Alabama...

[_Dr Exiled]

I think that's right. So unfortunately I can't help suspecting that Carmack and Skousen are being competent linguistic technicians but are making a very basic mistake as linguists, by misunderstanding what it means for grammar to be unconscious. Just because Early Modern English grammar had ceased to be a vernacular grammar in Joseph Smith's day just does not mean at all that it was neurophysiologically impossible for Smith to generate utterances with a similar grammar to that of Early Modern English. He would know with unconscious instinct that this grammar wasn't right for his own native dialect, but he would still be perfectly able to speak it.

At least that's my understanding. I'm not a linguist, but I've hung out with linguists quite a lot. Skousen and Carmack have leant their names to strong claims about how Joseph Smith could not possibly have produced Early Modern English grammar, but my impression is that if they were to state these strong claims among other linguists, they'd get strange looks and skeptical queries.

I suppose another possibility is that Carmack and Skousen themselves are not guilty of this basic misunderstanding but they are keeping mum while enthusiastic fans of theirs commit it because without that misunderstanding most of the interest in their work would disappear, and they like the applause.

I think Joseph Smith, the treasure digger, wanted to impress as his magician mentor Luman Walters would have done. So, he wrote his book as he conceived an old Israelite, Native American prophet would and then tried to make it sound like the 1611 KJV Bible to lend more credibility to his work.

[_grindael]

The Great CARMACK would never get tripped up like that impostor CARNAC...

[_Dr Exiled]

The Great CARMACK would never get tripped up like that impostor CARNAC...

The Q15 magicians need their magician apologists like SKOUSEN, CARMACK, and GIVENS to stay on track. No slip-ups allowed!