EModE Question

[Gadianton]

But now we've got Agosh claiming that the money is getting sunk into typesetting? Really?

Professor Scratch,

Just making sure you didn't miss this tidbit from Agosh...

"..has gone to costs of typesetting (Skousen's brother)"

[Doctor Scratch]

But now we've got Agosh claiming that the money is getting sunk into typesetting? Really?

Professor Scratch,

Just making sure you didn't miss this tidbit from Agosh...

"..has gone to costs of typesetting (Skousen's brother)"

I *did* see that, Dean Robbers--thank you. I think it just underscores my basic point, which is that you can read this in basically one of two ways. Either it is a moneymaking scheme (they pay Skousen's brother, and then he re-distributes the money, I guess?), *or* they really do think they are paying for something worthwhile (maybe Skousen's brother is hand-stitching the bindings for each book?) and are pouring craploads of money into something silly.

[I have a question]

The real bottom line of Skousen's folly is that it is ultimately disputing the notion that Joseph translated anything. It's actually apostasy unless or until the Church openly embraces it. Given the Church has ceased funding it, I'd suggest that's the Church doing the exact opposite of embracing it.

[Physics Guy]

I think Chap has the real point. The EModE gambit is a punt, icing the puck, kicking the ball way down the field. The other team may then get the possession but at least they'll be starting from a lot farther away from the goal, so the defenders get breathing room. The Book of Mormon is just too obviously a crude 19th century knock-off Bible. The EModE gambit tries to rebut that obvious charge decisively by proving that, whatever the Book of Mormon may be, it definitely wasn't a 19th century knock-off of anything.

As far as I can see, though, the belief that these typically early modern syntax patterns are a proof of anything is based entirely on an embarrassingly basic misunderstanding of linguistics.

Grammar is unconscious: native speakers of a language learned in childhood follow the right rules unconsciously, and recognize right and wrong grammar instinctively, without any conscious understanding of what the rules are.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

It's a pure nonsense utterance, and one that nobody had ever heard before Chomsky made it a famous quotation, yet every native speaker of English knows immediately that it is well-formed grammatically. The unconscious nature of native grammar is indeed the foundation of modern linguistics. Lots of quantitative experimental studies show that non-native speakers who learned a language past a certain critical age never attain the speed and accuracy of grammatical judgement that true native speakers all seem to have hard-wired, even if these non-native speakers are so fluent that nobody can tell their normal speech from native speech. Even if the later learners never make errors themselves, they don't recognize subtle errors as quickly and surely as native-speaker children.

In absolutely no way at all, however, does the unconscious nature of native syntax mean that human brains are incapable of generating utterances that do not follow the syntactic rules of their native dialects. All it means is that when somebody does form a non-standard sentence there will be a little Grammar-Nazi piece of their brain commenting, "That isn't right." If the rest of the brain says, "I know, I'm speaking weirdly on purpose" then the Grammar-Nazi piece of brain just says, "Hmmph." People can speak nonsense, they can learn new languages, they can play language games.

And people can imitate other dialects deliberately. Nothing in linguistics says anything whatever against these obvious facts. And nothing about the unconscious nature of native syntax is even relevant to what happens when people are deliberately trying to speak outside their native dialect.

Mentioning the unconscious nature of native syntax in this Book of Mormon-EModE context is nothing but snow. Nobody has ever suggested that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon in his own native dialect. Instead, as Chap says, everyone's immediate thought is that he was trying to imitate the King James Bible—and doing it badly. So the unconscious nature of native syntax is completely irrelevant to the Book of Mormon. It's not written in the native English dialect of anyone who ever lived.

From following some discussions on Mormon Dialogue & Discussion Board among ostensibly educated people, however, I really think that a lot of the popularity of this Book of Mormon EModE thing is based on letting people think that it is a proven fact of neurolinguistics that Joseph Smith's brain could not have produced Book of Mormon syntax because syntax is unconscious. Making that claim, or even saying things that sound like that claim without immediately clarifying, is either deliberate deception or embarrassingly basic ignorance about the foundations of linguistics.

I'm afraid I lean towards the ignorance as the true explanation, even though some of these people have PhDs in relevant fields. It is possible to get a Ph.D. by mastering technical details while retaining childish misconceptions about one's subject.

[Lemmie]

Professor Scratch,

Just making sure you didn't miss this tidbit from Agosh...

"..has gone to costs of typesetting (Skousen's brother)"

I *did* see that, Dean Robbers--thank you. I think it just underscores my basic point, which is that you can read this in basically one of two ways. Either it is a moneymaking scheme (they pay Skousen's brother, and then he re-distributes the money, I guess?), *or* they really do think they are paying for something worthwhile (maybe Skousen's brother is hand-stitching the bindings for each book?) and are pouring craploads of money into something silly.

Regarding Skousen’s brother, there was this in notes from the JSP press conference:

In 1988, Richard Howard received permission from RLDS leaders to allow Royal Skousen access to the printer’s manuscript and for Nevin Skousen (Royal’s brother) to photograph the manuscript in color. In closing, she noted the Community of Christ commitment to solid history that assists in their “identity formation.”

... Robin Jensen (co-editor of this volume) discussed the slightly different goals of the current edition of the printer’s manuscript and Royal Skousen’s critical text project, noting that Skousen’s edition was focused on producing a text while the JSP treatment is in the vein of documentary editing. As such, the latter is a bit more conservative and will represent more characters with a diamond shape indicating the editors are unsure what letter was intended.

https://www.benchmarkbooks.com/notes-fr ... rs-volume/

The “slightly different goals” sounds like a polite euphemism, doesn’t it? Maybe the Community of Christ is paying Skousen, through the Interpreter.

From the same link:

President Robin Linkhart, Community of Christ President of Seventy and Missionary Coordinator for the western US. On behalf of the Community of Christ, she expressed “deep appreciation for your acknowledgment of our role in the Joseph Smith Papers Project.” Referring to the forthcoming online publication of images of the printer’s manuscript, she noted that this will “graciously afford for study without barrier to anyone.”

[moksha]

More EModE - https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/73 ... write-Book of Mormon/

The guy makes the case for the Book of Mormon with EModE.

[honorentheos]

https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org ... rn-english

So the phrase "the more part" is an example of EmodE?

Hmmm.

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/searc ... sary|event

It looks to me like Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and Orson Pratt used the phrase.

[honorentheos]

Nevo linked to a more comprehensive paper by Carmack so I checked it out and tried another experiment to see if the supposed EmodE shows up in writings known to be by Smith, Cowdery or the like.

The first phrase he notes is the use of "of" where a more modern English writer would use "by" such as, "by the Lord". Since "of the" was guaranteed to overwhelm any search attempt, I settled on the phrase "commanded of the" because it seemed like a Mormon scripture phrase. Results? Here's the first one:

I, Oliver [Cowdery], being commanded of the Lord God, to go forth unto the Lamanites, to proclaim glad tidings of great joy unto them, by presenting unto them the fulness of the Gospel,1 of the only begotten son of God; and also, to rear up a pillar as a witness where the Temple of God shall be built, in the glorious New-Jerusalem;2 and having certain brothers with me, who are called of God to assist me, whose names are Parley [P. Pratt], Peter [Whitmer Jr.] and Ziba [Peterson], do therefore most solemnly covenant before God, that I will walk humbly before him, and do this business, and this glorious work according as he shall direct me by the Holy Ghost; ever praying for mine and their prosperity, and deliverance from bonds, and from imprisonments,3 and whatsoever may befal us, with all patience and faith.— Amen.
OLIVER COWDERY.

We, the undersigned, being called and commanded of the Lord God, to accompany our Brother Oliver Cowdery, to go to the Lamanites, and to assist in the above mentioned glorious work and business. We do, therefore, most solemnly covenant before God, that we will assist him faithfully in this thing, by giving heed unto all his words and advice, which is, or shall be given him by the spirit of truth, ever praying with all prayer and supplication, for our and his prosperity, and our deliverance4 from bonds, and imprisonments, and whatsoever may come upon us, with all patience and faith.—Amen.
Signed in presence of
JOSEPH SMITH, Jun.
DAVID WHITMER,5
P. P. PRATT,
ZIBA PETERSON,
PETER WHITMER [Jr]. [p. [1]]

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper ... ber-1830/1

It's valuable to reflect on the relationships here, too. This is late 1830, when the power dynamics were between the three witnesses before Sidney Rigdon came on the scene and changed them.

[honorentheos]

Next up, "lest - shall":

In descending order of frequency, the auxiliaries most commonly found in the Early Modern English textual record after the conjunction lest are should, might, may, would, will, and shall (based on extensive searches of the EEBO Phase 1 database).25 Consequently, we wouldn’t have expected there to be many lest constructions with shall in the King James Bible, and this expectation is borne out by the text. Taking into account the close to one million words found in the 1611 Bible (including the Apocrypha), these three instances mean that the lest–shall rate of the biblical text is 3.2 wpm. Because lest–shall usage did not continue into the late modern period robustly, heavier usage in other texts could qualify as a biblical hypercorrection.

Yet the four pseudo-biblical writings do not have any examples of lest–shall syntax. As noted, Snowden’s The American Revolution and Hunt’s The Late War do have lest–should constructions — 14 and 3 instances, respectively — but the other two pseudo-biblical texts do not. So, lest–should syntax, which is both biblical and persistent usage, is fairly well represented in the pseudo-biblical set, while the lest–shall usage of 2 Corinthians 12:20–21 is not represented at all.

Specifically, Snowden’s text had five contexts in which he might have employed lest–shall syntax and Hunt’s text had one;26 all 11 of Leacock’s and Linning’s lest sentences could have employed shall. Because lest–shall syntax is missing in 17 possible cases, it is possible that the pseudo-biblical authors were unaware of the rare biblical usage (only three times after 240 instances of lest), and this was also possible for Joseph Smith.

Nonetheless, the Book of Mormon has 14 cases of the conjunction lest followed immediately by sentences with the modal auxiliary verb shall, as in the following example:

Mosiah 2:32

But O my people, beware lest there shall arise contentions among you, and ye list to obey the evil spirit which was spoken of by my father Mosiah.

Present-tense ye list, conjoined to there shall arise, suggests the shall may primarily be a subjunctive mood marker. The Book of Mormon variation — “lest there shall arise . . . and ye [ø] list” — has been found in the textual record after lest and should.

These 14 cases represent an extraordinary amount of lest–shall usage.

From Joseph Smith's journal:

the bread <​& wine​> was then brought in, and I observed that we had fasted all the day; and lest we faint; as the Saviour did so shall we do on this occasion, we shall bless the bread and give it to the 12 and they to the multitude, after which we shall bless the wine and do likewise

[Dr Exiled]

EmodE will die out, perhaps slowly as there continues to be funding for it for some reason. If only there were recordings of upstate New York speakers circa 1830, the EmodE illusion would be solved quickly, I suspect. The next best thing, I think, would be analyzing letters from ordinary folk or court proceedings where the spoken word is more authentic. Times like these, I miss Clark Goble and his pushback on this silly theory. He championed finding court documents and seeing if there were the archaic forms Messrs Carmack and Skousen find in the bofm, d&c, and plot of zion revelation in these documents. Of course, if a secular linguist, expert in the Elizabethan Era were around to review Carmack and Skousen's work .....