![]() ![]() It is the syntactic building blocks of language that indicate the fundamental character of textual language. ![]() The suggestion that content-rich phrases are dispositive evidence for determining these things stems from inadequate reflection on details and implications of natural language production. Such phrases, however, are unable to establish either the fundamental character of the language or that Joseph Smith was the author of the Book of Mormon. Because a large amount of syntax is visible in the verbal system, studying the verbal system is of paramount importance.Ī late-modern view of the Book of Mormon’s cultural, religious phrases tends to be popular in the literature. There are many generalizable usage patterns that can be analyzed and compared. In contrast, the frequency of syntactic usage is less influenced by these things (although some aspects of syntactic usage are affected by context, subject matter, and genre, such as which tenses are predominantly used). Consciously produced content varies greatly in frequency according to context and subject matter and genre. Because authors do not consciously control what they nonconsciously produce, they reveal their native-speaker preferences in their (content-poor) syntax. These are separable objects of study: it is a straightforward matter to abstract away from either one in order to carry out linguistic and literary analysis.Ĭontent-rich phrases like “demands of justice” involve a high degree of conscious thought in their production, while content- poor phraseology like “the more part” is chiefly the result of nonconscious production. It’s helpful to bear in mind that cultural, religious language occurs within a syntactic framework. 5 On Content-Rich and Content-Poor Languageīefore considering the data, some general comments are in order about the implications of two types of textual evidence: cultural, religious phrases (content- rich) and syntax (content-poor). 3 After EEBO and ECCO, the most relevant corpora are probably Google Books 4 and the early American databases, Evans and Shaw-Shoemaker (these also contain many British writings republished in America, overlapping with content found in ECCO and even EEBO). After EEBO, the next most relevant database for comparison is Eighteenth Century Collections Online. ![]() EEBO contains many religious writings, including sermons as well as the early biblical texts. ![]() The narrative complexity, matching internal references, exact phrasal repetition (sometimes at a distance), intricate structuring (both large- and small-scale), and even instances of syntactic complexity suggest a primarily written work rather than a primarily oral production.īecause the text is full of biblical blending and religious language set in a framework of mostly early modern syntax, the Early English Books Online database 2 provides the largest amount of matching language - religious, lexical, and syntactic. That is because, though dictated, the Book of Mormon text presents itself as a written translation of authors and editors who also wrote out their compositions (though some chapters are said to be transcripts of oral discourse). It’s also important to recognize the type of language can tell us something definitive about Book of Mormon authorship and the fundamental nature of its language.Ī database such as Google Books, which contains a large number of religious writings, is potentially an appropriate corpus to use in comparing Book of Mormon English. 1 My purpose here is to show that this recently developed interpretive tool is quite often misleading in relation to the Book of Mormon and that it’s important to reserve judgment on historical usage patterns until multiple textual sources have been consulted. Such an approach suggests that almost all of its phraseology fits comfortably within its syntactic framework, which is mostly early modern in character.ĭuring the past decade, with the advent of Google’s Ngram Viewer (/ngrams), many have become interested in noting the historical (textual) popularity rates of various cultural, content- rich Book of Mormon phrases such as “demands of justice.” Some have concluded by what they have seen in Ngram Viewer charts that the evidence suggests the Book of Mormon is 19th-century in character and that Joseph Smith was the author or the partial author of the text (from revealed ideas). Other larger textual sources can provide a truer picture of relevant usage patterns of various content-rich phrases that occur in the Book of Mormon. Abstract: Google’s Ngram Viewer often gives a distorted view of the popularity of cultural/religious phrases during the early 19th century and before. Complexities in the English Language of the Book of Mormon - 2015.Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon.Robert Cundick: A Sacred Service of Music. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |