Response to Jockers, Criddle, et al., Now Available

[_Uncle Dale]

...Emulating archaic English does not just introduce extra
non-contextual words as a sort of surplus
...

There was a literary phenomenon during the late 18th and
early 19th century, of publications featuring pseudo-biblical
language -- for a number of different purposes, but generally
for political and/or humorous expression.

If we look back at a number of those literary creations, we can
see that many of them employed an almost ridiculous amount of
repetition. Repetition of biblical and faux biblical expressions, such
as "lo and behold," "and now moreover," "it came to pass," etc.

The language so often encountered in the Book of Mormon can be
viewed as a late-occurring member of that run of literary oddities;
and one in which repetition of such phraseology was carried past
the bounds of the ridiculous, into the realm of the absurd.

Mormon Church leaders long ago recognized this oddity as a problem,
and pared down the Book of Mormon, by removing many dozens of
unnecessary "it came to pass" entries, as well as replacing "which"
with "who," etc.

What would the Book of Mormon chapters' wordprints look like, after
having been stripped of this ponderous extra verbiage? I am not sure
exactly how such a "correction" might be accomplished, but I suppose
that the process would result in Book of Mormon chapters which do
not cluster quite so closely with the Book of Mormon reproductions of biblical
texts, on Bruce's pc1 scatter diagram.

The removal of the needless repetition might also "loosen up" the
pattern we see on that chart, of a "Book of Mormon cloud" of chapter plots. I'd
guess that the overlap of Book of Mormon and 19th century authors' text plots
we see in the pc3 and pc2 charts might also be somewhat visible
in a new pc1 chart, in which the archaic English and the repetition
were thus removed.

UD

[_MCB]

Dale, my problem with that methodology is that pruning out the KJE has to be done very carefully and arbitrarily, as with the "replace all" function in Word. As you know, I have played around with writing a modern English variant of the Book of Mormon. Writer's license comes into play, and the editor's word-choices. I don't think one can totally prune out the KJE. Remember, the language has evolved since 1829. Maybe that is why they had so much fun writing in KJE, because they were steeped in the KJ Bible, and their language was not as much different from that.

I think that playing around with Leacock might give us some good answers, since we have both his natural writing style, and his pseudo-KJE.

Also, a comparison of various human-produced prunings of the Book of Mormon with the original, and the editor's word-print might give us more information as to whether that methodology is legit.

Lots of questions, for which I don't know the answer. I do think that the KJE is probably the most serious problem with authorship attribution for the Book of Mormon.

[_GlennThigpen]

Lots of questions, for which I don't know the answer. I do think that the KJE is probably the most serious problem with authorship attribution for the Book of Mormon.

Especially since it is written in fifteenth century English rather than the seventeenth century English of the KJV.

Glenn

[_MCB]

Especially since it is written in fifteenth century English rather than the seventeenth century English of the KJV.

Well, they did lay it on pretty thick, but it is not as difficult to read as Chaucer.

Remember, when we of today read the "King James" Bible, it has been freshened up several times. Here is the original:

http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/161 ... uction.php

[_Roger]

Chris wrote:

Emulating archaic English does not just introduce extra
non-contextual words as a sort of surplus -- it also replaces
some of the words from that group that might be expected
in a "normal" text with its own favored expressions.

Yes, very well said. I think you've put your finger on the pulse of the problem for any stylometric method relying on common or "non-contextual" words.

Then why are there a lot of people with PHds who think otherwise--including both LDS and non-LDS? Which expert are we supposed to believe?

[_MCB]

Roger, the solution will always be iffy, because of the KJE. I do think Jockers has some good points, and adding in Lucy Smith, Alexander Campbell, and W. W. Phelps might just improve the picture.

Perhaps they can develop an algorithm which will correct for the skew caused by KJE, maybe a composite word-print of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and the translators of the King James Bible. ?????????????????

[_GlennThigpen]

Emulating archaic English does not just introduce extra non-contextual words as a sort of surplus -- it also replaces
some of the words from that group that might be expected
in a "normal" text with its own favored expressions.

Yes, very well said. I think you've put your finger on the pulse of the problem for any stylometric method relying on common or "non-contextual" words.

Then why are there a lot of people with PHds who think otherwise--including both LDS and non-LDS? Which expert are we supposed to believe?

Chris has done some work on the Urantia papers using the delta method and found, to his surprise, that he was the author of some of those papers, which is one of the things that lead him to believe that genre will influence the outcome of the NSC method. Also, Jockers study did not use only simple, non contextual words, which may lend itself to genre bias.

However, the Berkeley group of which John Hilton was a part, developed methods which they feel are relatively unbiased by genre. They spent seven years in working on their methods and refining their results before publishing their report. They also did not use the archaic non contextual words such as yea, etc and filtered out "and it came to pass" from their study.

Now maybe Chris can redo his work on the Urantia papers using the Berkeley Group's methods to see how he fares as an author???

The wordprint field is still developing, and the more tests that can be devised for more accurate authorship attribution the better. Right now, Bruce's papers line up pretty much in line with the earlier work of Rencher, Larsen, Layton, and also the later work by the Berkeley group.

The conjecture that a person attempting to imitate the KJV style will alter his non contextual wordprints is just that, conjecture. Although it may be possible that such may happen, studies have shown that when authors, even successful authors, try to imitate the writing style of other authors, even though they may successfully mimic the stylistic elements of another author, their non contextual word usage patterns still are clearly detectable. It remains to be proven that one trying to imitate an ancient style of writing will alter his or her non contextual wordprint patterns.

Don't get me wrong, I think that the question is valid, but someone needs to do some work showing that imitating the KJE will skew a person's wordprints before discounting the Jockers methods as extended by Bruce Schaalje and the work of the Berkeley Group.

Glenn

[_Uncle Dale]

Lots of questions, for which I don't know the answer. I do think that the KJE is probably the most serious problem with authorship attribution for the Book of Mormon.

Especially since it is written in fifteenth century English rather than the seventeenth century English of the KJV.

Glenn

We need to recall that the language King James' scholars used was already
old-fashioned when they constructed the KJV "Authorized" text. They were
not using the vernacular of their own day, but were resorting to emulation
of previous English Bible translations.

Thus -- I'm told -- the English of the KJV is a bit older than that of Shakespeare,
and more limited in its vocabulary and grammar.

However, the Book of Mormon appears to contain some phraseology that
predates even that of the KJV Bible. Why that is, I do not know -- but I
do know that ancient preColumbian Americans were not talking and writing
like King Henry the Eighth. The linguistic oddities of the Book of Mormon did not come
from any "Nephites" (whether we today choose to believe in them or not).

Nor is it likely that the pre-KJV oddities found in the Book of Mormon came
from the everyday language of New England, New York, or Pennsylvania of
the early 19th century. Some of the oddities that are not pre-KJV may indeed
have originated in the vernacular used by Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery,
Sidney Rigdon, etc. ---- but probably not the pre-KJV language.

The most logical explanation for that stuff is that it came from a book --
from some text pre-dating Shakespeare, but popular enough to have
remained in print in the America of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Probably that's the closest we will every get to an explanation. Even if that
precise text were somehow identified and publicized today, the discovery
would not change people's minds as to whether Nephites were real or not:
it would merely be added to the list of possible influences on the "translation."

So -- we can scratch our heads over the use of archaic English, and how
it might effect word-printing all day long. But that only takes us as far as
Bruce's first step -- the attempt to disqualify potential author-candidates
before any testing is carried out.

Since both of the recent teams of researchers passed beyond that first
step, it is pretty much a moot question.

Bruce's second step was to employ NSC (and, I guess, Delta) computerized
categorization, to eliminate ALL of the tested 19th century writers from a
place among the likely Book of Mormon textual contributors.

That second step --- if it becomes the modern scholarly consensus ---
pretty much puts an end to BOTH the Smith-alone and Smith+helpers theories.

I have the feeling that such a non-sectarian, professional consensus will
not be forthcoming from the scholars, however. If I'm still around ten years
from now, somebody can remind me that I made that prediction back in 2011.

UD

[_MCB]

Well, we could still punch a hole in the back wall of the whole theory. Maybe someone DID find a manuscript dating back to 1472 somewhere in the Northeast part of the continent. "All things are possible." It is just that some things are more likely than others.

[_Roger]

Chris:

I starting reading through your Urantia project but don't have time to finish at the moment.

You wrote [bold mine]:

Gardner provides a very extensive list of unusual words and phrases that appear both in the Urantia Book and in Sadler’s many works. He also demonstrates that the science of the Book—particularly its endorsements of eugenics and of De Vries’ “mutation theory” of evolution—reflects of Sadler’s own strongly held views.Other parallels are found in its theology, its psychiatric prescriptions, and its economic and political theories.viii

Do you know what percentage of grammatical errors or colloquialisms occur in the Urantia text? Is it a fairly polished text?