Book of Mormon and the Cognate Accusative

[_Buffalo]

Google is killing all the Book of Mormon "evidences" :(

[_TrashcanMan79]

Dan responded a couple hours ago, denying that he ever said the cognate accusative was a "knock-out proof", which is odd, since nobody in the thread claimed Dan said this. But but he did think the "evidence" was significant enough to mention in the recent FAIR youtube video. I then reminded Dan about what he wrote in his Evidences of the Book of Mormon:

I teach Arabic about half-time at Brigham Young University, and one of the linguistic forms in Arabic that's common in other Semitic language as well, is something that's called a "cognate accusative"—where you use a noun that's related to a verb in a sentence. You say, "I hit him a great hitting" or "I have dreamed a dream." And the example that I often use to illustrate this, which is not naturally English, is one right out of 1 Nephi, where Lehi reports to his sons, "Behold I have dreamed a dream, or in other words I have seen a vision." Now this "I have dreamed a dream" is a perfect cognate accusative, and when the students hear about this—the ones who know the Book of Mormon—they say, "Ah, yes. Now we understand," because this is an authentic example of the Arabic or Semitic construction.

Even the second part of the sentence (though we lose something in English) when Lehi says, "Behold I have dreamed a dream; or, in other words, I have seen a vision," (1 Nephi 8:2) demonstrates this. You have to remember that English is based on two different languages. English is a hybrid of a sort of Latin or French with a Germanic language—the Anglo-Saxons and then the Norman Conquest, of course. So you have two different words for many things, a sort of low Germanic word and a high Latin-style word. For example, a handbook: we also have the Latin word manual coming from the word Manis for "hand." They mean the same thing. Likewise, with the words "I have seen a vision,"—what he's really saying is "I have seen a seeing." The Latin word seeing was related to the word for vision, and you have a related German word, sehen, or "I have seen a vision," using the Latin word. But in the original it was probably something like this: "Behold I have dreamed a dream; or in other words, I have seen a seeing." So I use this verse in the Book of Mormon in my Arabic grammar class, just to make a point to the students. Now, I ask you how a nineteenth-century farm boy could have come up with something like that, which is a perfect illustration of an Arabic grammatical point. Probably he did a lot of his work in the graduate school there at Palmyra University—well, of course there wasn't such a place. And there was no such Joseph Smith. This came to him via another route, not through academic study.

Oops.

Oh, my. How embarrassing for DCP.

[_Quasimodo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmSHk9TB3sI&feature=related

Apparently, Les Mis was translated from the original Arabic.

[_TrashcanMan79]

Mike (or anyone who's seen it), would you mind posting a link to the MAD thread? Thanks.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Mike (or anyone who's seen it), would you mind posting a link to the MAD thread? Thanks.

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/569 ... e__st__160

The language you quote from me is far too strong, obviously, for the little 1 Nephi 8:2 cognate accusative alone, taken in isolation. I apologize for the fact that my more or less off the cuff oral comments sometimes fail to meet standards of precision generally applied to carefully written and edited written statements. I've never heard you speak, but I doubt that you ever make such bush league mistakes as those to which I'm prone. However, I'm afraid I'm not as embarrassed by the remark that you quote from me as you presumably wish me to be.

[_bcspace]

Difficult to tell. Biblical Hebrew is full of pleonasms (like cognate accusatives) and so one might expect to find many in another language which has it's roots therein. However, one might also find many among a culture raised on a translation of Biblical Hebrew.

[_Morley]

Difficult to tell. Biblical Hebrew is full of pleonasms (like cognate accusatives) and so one might expect to find many in another language which has it's roots therein. However, one might also find many among a culture raised on a translation of Biblical Hebrew.

Like 19th Century America.

[_bcspace]

Like 19th Century America.

Indeed.

[_Morley]

Like 19th Century America.

Indeed.

Which explains The Book of Mormon.

[_Buffalo]

Check out this ancient Hebrew hymn:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDfe9dn59Mk