Review of Carmack "A Comparative View of Causative Constructions in the Book of Mormon"

Preliminary review, work in progress and subject to revision.

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Stanford Carmack’s 2026 article in the Interpreter titled “A Comparative View of Causative Constructions in the Book of Mormon” focuses on an important aspect of the translation issue.

Here is the link to the article.

https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/a-comparative-view-of-causative-constructions-in-the-book-of-mormon

A Comparative View of Causative Constructions in the Book of Mormon

Stanford Carmack

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 68 (2026) : 223-242

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The article, like Carmack’s other work, effectively refutes claims that Joseph Smith (JS) copied the so-called “pseudo-archaic” books of his era. However, the article also promotes the Early Modern English (EME) theory, which rejects Joseph Smith’s claim that he translated the engravings on the plates. Instead, EME teaches that the text appeared on the surface of a seer stone that Joseph read aloud to his scribes (the “tight control” theory).

Because I disagree with the premise and implications of EME, I’m interested in the data and arguments for and against EME and the other theories proposed to account for the Book of Mormon. In my view, Carmack’s data corroborates both (i) EME and (ii) JS as translator. Carmack assigns zero probability to the JS as translator scenario; he never even mentions the possibility.

In this review I propose the alternative interpretation of the data that supports JS as translator.

To appreciate the implications of EME, readers should understand the three basic narratives about the translation of the Book of Mormon. Hence this introduction to the topic, followed by the review.

Introduction to translation theories.

Debates about the translation of the Book of Mormon circle around three alternative theories articulated in the 1834 book Mormonism Unvailed.

1. The “stone-in-the-hat” (SITH)

This is the first explicit articulation of SITH, which is the foundation for EME.

The translation finally commenced. They were found to contain a language not now known upon the earth which they termed "reformed Egyptian characters." The plates, therefore, which had been so much talked of, were found to be of no manner of use. After all, the Lord showed and communicated to him every word and letter of the Book. Instead of looking at the characters inscribed upon the plates, the prophet was obliged to resort to the old "peep stone," which he formerly used in money-digging. This he placed in a hat, or box, into which he also thrust his face. Through the stone he could then discover a single word at a time, which he repeated aloud to his amanuensis, who committed it to paper, when another word would immediately appear, and thus the performance continued to the end of the book.

2. The “Urim and Thummim” (U&T)

The next paragraph in the book acknowledges the Urim and Thummim (U&T) as the instrument JS used to translate the engravings, as he and Oliver Cowdery (OC) always said. But the book falsely claims the U&T was the same one mentioned in the Old Testament and that Joseph Smith did not look on the plates, contrary to what JS, OC, Lucy Mack Smith, and others said.

Another account they give of the transaction, is, that it was performed with the big spectacles before mentioned, and which were in fact, the identical Urim and Thumim mentioned in Exodus 28 — 30, and were brought away from Jerusalem by the heroes of the book, handed down from one generation to another, and finally buried up in Ontario county, some fifteen centuries since, to enable Smith to translate the plates without looking at them !

https://archive.org/details/mormonismunvaile00howe/page/18

3. The Spalding theory (composition)

Chapter XIX in Mormonism Unvailed sets out the Spalding theory, which attributes the Book of Mormon to a manuscript composed by Spalding, presumably edited by Sidney Rigdon. This “composition” theory has several variations, including claims that JS himself composed the text and/or plagiarized it from other pseudo-archaic works, that he “performed” it using notes, etc.

That there has been, from the beginning of the imposture, a more talented knave behind the curtain, is evident to our mind, at least ; but whether he will ever be clearly, fully and positively unvailed and brought into open day-light, may of course he doubted… we think that facts and data have been cited, sufficient at least to raise a strong presumption that the leading features of the "Gold Bible*' were first conceived and concocted by one Solomon Spalding, while a resident of Conneaut, Ashtabula county, Ohio.

https://archive.org/details/mormonismunvaile00howe/page/278/mode/2up?q=curtain

In response to Mormonism Unvailed, JS and OC repeatedly and formally, in print, affirmed that JS translated the plates by means of the U&T. E.g.,

immediately after my arrival there I commenced copying the characters off the plates. I copied a considerable number of them, and by means of the Urim and Thummim I translated some of them…

(Joseph Smith—History 1:62)

Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites would have said, ‘Interpreters,’ the history or record called ‘The Book of Mormon.’

(Joseph Smith—History, Note, 1)

In direct contrast to U&T, critics promoted the SITH and “composition” theories. Decades later, David Whitmer promoted SITH, and Emma Smith made two known statements allegedly in support of SITH (although they are controversial).

Joseph's contemporaries and successors in Church leadership reaffirmed the U&T narrative through at least 2007. Elder L. Tom Perry, in General Conference, said

Oliver wrote of this remarkable experience: “These were days never to be forgotten—to sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven, awakened the utmost gratitude of this bosom! Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated, with the Urim and Thummim … the history, or record, called ‘The book of Mormon’” (Messenger and Advocate, Oct. 1834, 14; see also Joseph Smith—History 1:71, note).

April 2007 General Conference, The Message of the Restoration

Meanwhile, some LDS scholars revived the SITH narrative from Mormonism Unvailed. Among the most prominent advocates of SITH are Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack. Skousen famously teaches that

"Joseph Smith’s claim that he used the Urim and Thummim is only partially true [i.e., regarding the 116 pages]; and Oliver Cowdery’s statements that Joseph used the original instrument while he, Oliver, was the scribe appear to be intentionally misleading."

See https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/2026/04/thank-you-royal-skousen.html

Skousen’s statement was first published in the Interpreter, a journal that consistently promotes SITH through its editorial decisions. The article I review below is yet another example of the Interpreter promoting SITH.

Despite fervent advocacy on the part of the Interpreter and other LDS intellectuals, some Latter-day Saints still believe what JS and OC taught. The historical sources have been fully examined and assessed by several authors, including me (A Man that Can Translate) and together with my co-author James Lucas (By Means of the Urim and Thummim: Restoring Translation to the Restoration). We believe the evidence corroborates what JS and OC taught. The review below explains some of that evidence and related reasoning.

In recent years some LDS scholars have sought to merge SITH into U&T by claiming that when JS and OC wrote “Urim and Thummim” they actually meant SITH, as though there was only one translation narrative. However, the distinction between the SITH and U&T narratives was clear in Mormonism Unvailed. JS and OC were explicit about the U&T precisely because of what Mormonism Unvailed claimed. They even edited D&C 10 to insert Urim and Thummim to make the point clear.

See https://www.ldshistoricalnarratives.com/2024/09/the-embarrassed-narrative-and-sith.html

Critics and some believers have embraced the “composition” theory as well. In his article below, Carmack effectively addresses that theory by responding to an argument that JS was influenced by John Bunyan.

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Review of Carmack’s article.

Here is the link to the article. 

https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/a-comparative-view-of-causative-constructions-in-the-book-of-mormon

My interlinear "peer review" comments are in red, showing how I would have peer reviewed this article.

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A Comparative View of Causative Constructions in the Book of Mormon

Stanford Carmack

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 68 (2026) : 223-242

Abstract: One type of English frequently found in the Book of Mormon is the finite causative construction. For example, “they caused that he should be bound” (Alma 30:29). There are 136 finite instances after the verb cause. Twenty-five pseudo-archaic texts do not have any finite causatives. The King James Bible has only three in more than 300 contexts. A subtype of the finite causative is the ditransitive causative. The King James Bible does not have any. The Book of Mormon has twelve. The most found in another text is four. This usage was obsolete around the year 1725. John Bunyan employed one ditransitive causative in about forty writings. Neither that nor his limited finite causative usage prompted pseudo-archaic imitation. In many ways, it is clear that there was no Bunyanesque influence on Book of Mormon English. The comparative evidence indicates that the Book of Mormon’s causative complex did not originate with Joseph Smith.

Carmack’s linguistic analysis of the Book of Mormon has usefully and convincingly shown that Joseph Smith (JS) did not copy from or plagiarize the “pseudo-archaic” texts. Unfortunately, he continues to extrapolate his data far beyond that limited utility to promote the Early Modern English (EME) theory he and Royal Skousen have developed over the years in conjunction with the stone-in-the-hat (SITH) theory.

This paper perpetuates the logical and factual fallacies underlying the entire EME/SITH theory, which, as Royal Skousen has explains, lead to the conclusion that JS and OC intentionally misled everyone about the translation of the Book of Mormon.

Skousen and Carmack consistently fail to consider the contrary view that Joseph and Oliver told the truth, as this paper exemplifies.

In this paper, Carmack offers specific evidence that JS did not plagiarize John Bunyan. That is useful against arguments that JS plagiarized Bunyan, but it is not the same as showing “there was no Bunyanesque influence on Book of Mormon English.”

Carmack’s conclusion demonstrates the logical fallacy:

Bunyanesque influence is not supported textually in many different ways; most of these could not be discussed here due to scope limitations. Though there is overlap in linguistic features, the Book of Mormon has many not found in his writings. Some pseudo-archaic authors were probably as familiar as Joseph Smith with Bunyan’s language, yet they did not employ the Book of Mormon’s preferentially finite verbal complementation. As noted, suffer syntax is utterly different.

It is a logical fallacy to say that the unlikely borrowing of one category of grammatical construction from one source means that source had no possible influence. JS explained that he had “an intimate acquaintance with those of different denomination” so his mental language bank was accumulated from a variety of sources.

This paper states speculative assumptions and inferences as facts, such as here:

In summary, there is no earlier textual support for someone in Joseph Smith’s position composing so many finite and ditransitive causatives. The idea that the text was specifically revealed explains why his 1829 dictation ended up with these.

Carmack’s data on the existence and quantity of finite and ditransitive causatives is an important contribution, but his use of that data to promote EME/SITH is a logical fallacy for 3 reasons: (i) If JS (as he claimed) translated the engravings on the plates, these finite causatives were present in the original text he translated, including the ditransitive causatives; (ii) JS had a propensity to repeat phrases and grammatical constructions, such as the frequent “it came to pass” which appears far more frequently in the Book of Mormon than in the Bible, as well as to paraphrase, combine or “blend” biblical passages; and (iii) like “it came to pass,” there are examples of these finite causatives in the KJV as well as in the writings of Jonathan Edwards, so they would have been in JS’s mental language bank for him to draw upon and paraphrase, combine or blend into the 12 ditransitive causatives in the text.

Carmack does not address these points because he inexplicably ignores evidence that the finite causative construction was used by Jonathan Edwards in publications readily available to Joseph Smith in Palmyra. Later in this review we’ll compare examples with the text in the Book of Mormon.

It is appropriate to compare the Book of Mormon text to written texts, since it reads like a written text in various ways.

This is a fair point, with the caveat that Carmack compares the Book of Mormon, which is an unedited transcript of a dictation, with databases of published, edited books. Apart from the presumably verbatim transcript recorded primarily by OC, we cannot know for a fact how JS spoke when he was not dictating the text. Carmack’s EME theory assumes JS did not naturally speak in the same manner in which he dictated the text.

Relevant to this study, which treats a portion of the text’s verbal complementation, there are more than 500 finite complements after verbs of influence. This kind of complementation is typical of formal, written registers.¹ There is also a very large amount of matching syntax between the Book of Mormon and earlier written texts.

For this study, as in my other studies of Book of Mormon English, I have made a best effort at searching the largest databases, using many spelling variants and searching for both continuous stretches of language and discontinuous combinations. The primary sources [Page 224] searched are in the accompanying note.² I use WordCruncher for searches,³ employing filters and taking into account punctuation and many syntactic possibilities, as needed. Consequently, the searches are good at gathering a wide variety of syntactic examples. Nevertheless, later studies will be able to improve on these results since databases improve over time. Examples have been missed due to incomplete and flawed databases.

In searching these databases over the past eleven years, I have found that the Book of Mormon has dozens of outliers of historical English usage, in some cases extreme outliers, such as its “save it were|be” phraseology. In cases such as these, the Book of Mormon seemingly fills gaps in historical English usage that were little used, though the syntactic structures could have been frequently used by analogy. In the case of the archaic syntax “save it were,” there are fewer than ten original instances in the databases before 1830; at present I know of six. Joseph Smith dictated seventy-seven of them.

This observation merits an extended analysis.

While the “save it were/be” phraseology in the Book of Mormon supports Carmack’s EME theory, a more parsimonious explanation—one that is consistent with Joseph as translator—sees this phraseology as an adaptation or blending of biblical and Edwardsian language (“except it were/be”).

Royal Skousen has identified several examples of such blending of KJV passages. While I agree with Skousen on that point, I’ve proposed that some of his examples fit better with blending of Edwardsian terminology.

One example of blending/substituting I’ve discussed involves the nonbiblical BM phrases “plan of redemption” and “plan of salvation” which can be considered adaptations or blending of Edwards’ phrases “work of redemption” and “work of salvation.” “Plan” is a nonbiblical word that Edwards used often. His biography of David Brainerd included this passage: “I saw more of God in the wisdom discovered in the plan of man's redemption than I saw of any other of his perfections.” JS, presumably familiar with this phraseology, preferred “plan” over Edwards’ “work” in these phrases as a better translation of the engravings on the plates.

The phrase “except it be” appears in the NT (5) and in the Palmyra newspapers and the works of Jonathan Edwards.

Examples:

Palmyra Register, Mar. 3, 1819:

“a law should pass to prohibit the march of the army of the United States, or any corps of it, into any foreign territory, without the previous authorization of Congress, except it be in fresh pursuit of a defeated enemy.”

Edwards:

“So that it is nonsense, except it be proper to say that a man can with his will resist his own will, or except it be possible for him to desire to resist his own will; that is, except it be possible for a man to will a thing and not will it at the same time.”

“For the effect of grace is upon the will; so that it is nonsense, except it be proper to say that a man with his will can resist his own will…”

JS also used the phrase “except it be” at the outset of the translation of the Book of Mormon, but then he began substituting “save” for “except,” as we’ll see below.

This substitution makes sense because the terms are equivalent. Webster’s 1828 dictionary recognizes “save” as a synonym for “except,” giving two examples from the KJV:

10. To except; to reserve from a general admission or account.

Israel burned none of them, save Hazor only. Joshua 11:13.

Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes, save one. 2 Corinthians 11:24.

[Save is here a verb followed by an object. It is the imperative used without a specific nominative; but it is now less frequently used than except.]

https://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/save

Additional KJV examples where “save” equates to “except” include these:

But the poor man had nothing, save one little ewe lamb (2 Samuel 12:3)

And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God. (Luke 18:19)

“Save” as a synonym for “except” also appears in the Palmyra newspapers:

Wayne Sentinel, Nov 24, 1824:

“La Fayette has passed through the streets of our cities, unadorned, save by his own virtues, that tens of thousands of the most lovely and most respected of women, filling the windows of the houses to see him, have sent up prayer to the omnipotent for his happiness.”

James Hervey, whose works were on sale in Palmyra, used “save” this way in this passage.

Especially, since much of thy appointed time is already elapsed, and the remainder is all uncertainty, save only that it is in the very act to fly.

OC used it the same way, raising the possibility that he influenced JS’s shift from “except” to “save.”

“I wrote with my own pen the intire book of mormon (save a few pages) as it fell from the Lips of the prophet.”

JS dictated “except it be” in the earliest part of the translation we have (Mosiah 1,2,3,5,11 and Alma 11,34). (We obviously don’t know what he dictated for the lost 116 pages). The nonbiblical phrase “save it be” first appears in Mosiah 29, then after the Alma 11,34 exceptions, “save it be” appears in 46 passages in the rest of Alma through Enos.

“Except/Save it were” follows a similar pattern.

“Except it were” appears in the NT (2), Edwards, and in the first part of the translation in Mosiah 6,13,22,23,24,25, with outliers in Alma 42,48 and Hel 8. “Save it were” starts in Mosiah 18 and 27, then appears 74 more times from Alma through Jacob.

Except it be (early in BM)	NT (5) Mosiah (7) Alma (2) DC (3) JE (40) Wayne Sentinel	Matt, John, Acts, 1&2 Cor Mosiah 1,2,3,5,11 Alma 11,34 DC 24,43,132
Save it be (later in BM)	1 Ne (2) 2 Ne (16) Jacob (5) Enos (1) Mosiah (1) Alma (9) Helaman (3) 3 Nephi (4) Mormon (4) Ether (2) DC (9)	Mos 29 Alma 20, 26, 27, 30, 32, 39, 45, 54, 58
Except it were (early in BM)	NT (2) BM (13) JE (5)	John (2) Mos 6,13,22,23,24,25 Alma 42,48 Hel 8
Save it were (later in BM)	BM (76) DC (1) PGP (1)	Mos 18, 27 Alma 3,4,13,14,17,19,21,22,30,31,43,62,63
Except it was	BM (1) JE (4)	Alma 36
Save it was	BM (4) DC (1) PGP (1)

 

“Except it was” appears only once in the BM (Alma 36) and in Edwards. “Save it was” appears later in BM (Alma 49, Ether, Enos), DC (1) and PGP (1).

In a previous article, Carmack separately noted that

Of the three non-biblical save phrases “save it be/was/were,” indicative past-tense “save it was” (D&C 9:7) was probably dictated before the earliest Book of Mormon appearance. The first instances of subjunctive present-tense “save it be” were dictated close in time to each other. Subjunctive past-tense “save it were” (D&C 18:35) was dictated more than a month after the first Book of Mormon occurrence.

https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/on-doctrine-and-covenants-language-and-the-1833-plot-of-zion

His note 35 in that article suggested that the frequency of the phrase is determinative.

Note 36. Nor are there any writings that employ “save it be” anywhere close to the number of times that we encounter it in the Book of Mormon (48 times).Suppose we were to assert that the heavy use of “save it be” in the Doctrine and Covenants and in the Book of Mormon was merely an indication that Joseph Smith overused rare phrases that he came to favor.

Another example of JS’s tendency to repeat phrases is “it came to pass,” which is far more frequent in the BM than in the KJV.

This could be a possible explanation in isolation, but it fails to explain a host of forms found in the Book of Mormon.

It is a logical fallacy to reject JS’s repetition of phraseology as an explanation on the grounds that it does not explain other phraseology.

If one were to resort to this argument, then the strong match between the ubiquitous affirmative, declarative, periphrastic did usage of the Book of Mormon with 16th-century patterns, on multiple levels, would remain unexplained.

Observing JS’s pattern of repetition does not preclude explanations for the did usage.

Nor does such a view explain the prevalence of extrabiblical, archaic vocabulary in the earliest text, or the diversity of systematic syntax found in the Book of Mormon, including but not limited to the presence of a rich variety of 16th-century agentive of usage (which pseudo-biblical texts do not have), the solid match between command syntax with some late 15th-century Caxton usage, the good match between various causative constructions and the Early Modern English period, as well as personal which, embedded auxiliary usage, the {-th} plural, plural was, some past participle leveling, etc.

Observing JS’s pattern of repetition does not preclude explanations for these observations of syntax and vocabulary.

 

Numbers of Words in the Book of Mormon

The Book of Mormon text that I searched for this study has 270,002 indexed and tagged words. (See the end of note 1 for the critical text assembled by Royal Skousen that was digitized for searching in WordCruncher.) There are 252,355 words marked as nonbiblical—mostly occurring outside identifiable biblical quotation sections.

By “nonbiblical” we infer Carmack means words not used in direct quotations from the Bible and not words that do not appear at all in the Bible. My own terminology considers “nonbiblical words” to be words that do not appear in the KJV.

There are 17,168 words marked as biblical; they are part of thirty-six biblical sections. There are 479 words marked as part of the two witness statements. For this study, 252,350 is the number used most often in comparisons and for normalization.

Comparison of Cause and Make

The focus of this paper is on a subset of the text’s verbal complementation after verbs of influence (suasive verbs).⁴ The verb cause obligatorily takes a complement in English. As an example, it would be ungrammatical to say “they caused” without a complement. Sometimes the complement is an object: “they caused trouble”; sometimes it is a verbal complement: “they caused us to wait.” The latter is called a causative construction (causative, for short). The verb make is also a causative verb. In present-day English, the expression with the verb make would most often be “they made us wait.” In earlier [Page 225] English, “they made us to wait” was a possibility as well. EEBO has eleven original instances of “they made us to <infinitive>.”

In nonbiblical portions of the text, the Book of Mormon has 235 causative constructions after the verb cause, and ten after the verb make (for example, “I will make that thy food shall become sweet”; 1 Nephi 17:12). The King James Bible (not including the Apocrypha) has 303 causative constructions after the verb cause, and 291 after the verb make.

For both causative verbs in the Book of Mormon and the King James Bible, the finite–infinitive complementation binaries contrast sharply, as indicated in table 1. Specifically, in the King James Bible, after both verbs, verbal complementation is almost entirely infinitival (99.3 percent infinitival; for example, “they caused it to be proclaimed”; Exodus 36:6). But in the Book of Mormon, complementation is mostly finite after the verb cause (57.9 percent); and after the verb make there is an equal split (five of each).⁵

Table 1. Causative constructions in scriptural texts: instances and infinitive rates.

	cause	make
King James Bible	303 (99.0%)	291 (99.7%)
Book of Mormon	235 (42.1%)	10 (50.0%)

 

The point here, apparently, is that because the infinitive rates in the KJV are far greater than in the Book of Mormon, the finitive rates in the Book of Mormon are “too high” for Joseph to have used them as the translator. But the frequent repetition of finitive causatives can also be explained by JS’s tendency to repeat phrases and terminology, as we saw with the “save it be/were” phrases.

Biblical passages

In biblical sections of the Book of Mormon, there are seven cause causatives, all infinitival and all found in the King James text.⁶ These are not included in the tally of 235 cause causatives. Also, in biblical sections, there are seven make causatives, all infinitival and all but 2 Nephi 7:2 found in the King James text.⁷ Only 2 Nephi 7:2 is counted as one of the ten make causatives in the Book of Mormon:

I make the rivers a wilderness and their fish to stink.

The end of this sentence shows a difference from the biblical reading, which is “I make the rivers a wilderness: their fish stinketh” (Isaiah 50:2). This is one of quite a few complex differences between biblical readings and what is found in biblical sections of the Book of Mormon.⁸

Elsewhere I’ve commented on these passages as also being a product of JS’s close but imperfect memorization of the KJV. By the time JS reached 2 Nephi 7:2, he had used the majority of the causatives in the text, including all of the other 9 make causatives, so it is not surprising that he would use yet another in dictating 2 Nephi 7:2.

As indicated above, the causative verb distribution (cause|make) in nonbiblical sections of the Book of Mormon is 235|10 (96%|4%). This preferential use of cause over make for the causative verb was [Page 226] atypical for the year 1830. It is also unlike King James usage, whose distribution is 303|291 (51%|49%).

It is unlike KJV in distribution, but shares the KJV form. Again, JS’s propensity for repeating phraseology explains why he would have dictated a disproportionate number of “cause” vs “make” causatives.

We have been told repeatedly that Joseph Smith imitated King James English as he dictated, even though there are many stark differences between biblical English usage and the language he dictated, in thousands of cases, such as in finite complementation rates after many verbs and the lexical distribution of the causative verb. Another clear difference involving rhetorical if is discussed below.

What “we have been told,” presumably by both critics and apologists, is interesting historically. Carmack makes the important point here that JS did not simply copy or imitate the KJV. The additional point that Carmack does not acknowledge is that this evidence also demonstrates that JS did not acquire his “mental language bank” solely from the Bible.

Causative syntax and a historical view of causatives

Consider the causative expression, “they caused us to wait.” Expressed with a finite complement, this would be “they caused that we waited” or “they caused that we wait” (tense-leveling in the dependent clause) or “they caused that we should wait” (general case: “cause_[verb] that X <verb.phrase>”). In the last finite expression, the function of the modal auxiliary verb should, historically speaking, was primarily grammatical rather than semantic.

Except for one partial exception,⁹ all finite causative constructions after the verb cause in the Book of Mormon have embedded modal auxiliary verbs; most of the time the modal is should. The other two embedded modals occurring in the text are shall and may. Historically speaking, should, shall, and may were the modals most commonly used, and the absence of a modal auxiliary verb was quite common as well. The use of the modals might, will, and would was less common.

The Book of Mormon dataset of 235 cause causatives, which are about 58 percent finite, disproves the idea that Joseph Smith dictated in the same way he spoke, since no one spoke English that way.

This is unknowable without verbatim transcripts of everyday language. Databases of published books raise a reasonable assumption, but it should be stated as such instead of stated as a fact.

The following paragraph provides independent confirmation of this. Cause causatives began to be used in Late Middle English as mostly infinitival in their verbal complementation, not finite. By Late Modern English they were even more infinitival.

These claims are based on databases of publications.

This observation is not limited to Book of Mormon causatives, but applies to hundreds of instances of verbal complementation in the text, after quite a few other verbs, most notably after the verbs command and suffer. There are more than 500 finite complements after suasive verbs in the text. This means that large amounts of its English usage might be different from how Joseph spoke.

“Might be different” is accurate.

In 2018, two linguists discussed historical causative syntax in English. Hubert Cuyckens stated that “the replacement of finite that-clauses by to-infinitives with causative verbs would already have [Page 227] occurred in the transition from OE to ME [Old English to Middle English].”¹⁰ (Causative constructions with the verb cause only began in the fourteenth century; before that, other verbs were used.) In an accompanying paper, Brian Lowrey made the following observations about causatives: “The shift from finite to non-finite complementation remains one of the elements that characterize the transition from the OE to the ME period”; “I should perhaps begin by confirming the essentially marginal status of finite causative complements in ME”; “his figures show that finite complements in general occur only occasionally with causatives throughout the ME period, suggesting that, like that complements to other verbs, they become less frequent over time.”¹¹

Moreover, the language of Joseph Smith’s mother’s biographical book,¹² dictated after his death, repeatedly disproves that he dictated the same way he spoke (she was born in 1776).

Framing this as proof reflects confirmation bias. JS’s own language changed after he moved to Kirtland, as we see in the edits to the early revelations and the text of the Book of Mormon. His mother dictated her history over a decade later. Carmack assumes without analysis that her language could not have changed the same way JS’s did.

Although both books were dictated, the linguistic usage and patterns of their dictated English are sharply different, in many different ways, including in causatives and verbal complementation.

They were dictated about 15 years apart by different people. Surely Lucy influenced JS, but JS also had “an intimate acquaintance with those of different denominations” that his mother did not.

These differences are often not explainable as a pseudo-archaic response on the part of Joseph Smith, as in the case at hand. That is, the preferential finite pattern of complementation in causative constructions in the Book of Mormon is not a pseudo-archaic pattern.

Again, this repudiation of the critical claim that Joseph copied the pseudo-archaic books is a significant contribution by Carmack.

Historical outliers of finite causatives

The language that Joseph Smith dictated in 1829, as found in both the original and printer’s manuscripts, has 136 finite cause causatives (for example, “they caused that he should be bound”; Alma 30:29). I have tried to determine the historical upper bound of this finite causative usage in English-language texts, considering more than 300,000 earlier texts. The most I have found so far in one text is eighteen (in about 143,700 words). It is a 1620 translation from Latin by a native French speaker who was fluent in English.¹³ The influence of French and Latin syntax led to the text being an outlier in its finite causative usage. That influence was absent in the case of the Book of Mormon; Joseph Smith was a monolingual English speaker in 1829.

Trailing this 1620 translation in finite causative usage, four translated texts dating between 1583 and 1664 were found to have twelve each, but with much lower finite rates than the 1620 translation, whose rate exceeds 75 percent. The finite rates in these four texts range [Page 228] between three and 21 percent. Two are Latin translations; two are French translations.¹⁴

This is all useful data, but ultimately not relevant in the context of JS’s pattern of repetitive phrasing.

It is possible that there is another English-language text with more than eighteen finite causatives, but less likely that it is an original English-language composition. An earlier text is more likely than a later one, because finite rates gradually fell over time. At this point, the vast majority of longer early modern texts have been searched, since they are part of the early modern corpus of the approximately 60,000 texts searched. The early modern database is also much more accurately transcribed than the eighteenth-century ECCO database, which is much less likely to have texts with many finite causatives. In any event, if an earlier text with more than eighteen is found, then the difference between the Book of Mormon and the next highest text will be less than 118. Yet the difference could still be quite large.

There are also probably no prior texts that repeat “it came to pass” with the same frequency as the Book of Mormon. Wordcruncher shows the great disparity in actual/expected rates of that phrase between the OT, NT, and BM.

Finite rates, instances, and intensity

This study considers finite causative rates and finite instances (or tokens) as possibly statistically significant values. The finite rate, as calculated here, is independent of the number of words in a text or corpus. It is an internal rate calculated as the number of finite causatives divided by the total number of causative constructions in a text or corpus. Although tokens can be normalized, the raw numbers might be statistically significant since large numbers might indicate sustained use. This is distinct from a limited amount of finite usage in a short text or limited clumping of finite usage in a long text. To take this into account, I have calculated a normalized finite intensity for individual texts and corpora. The normalized intensity is the finite rate multiplied by a normalized value of finite tokens. Of course, calculating usage intensity in other cases, based on the total number of words, also differentiates sustained use in a longer text from limited use in a shorter text.

The finite intensity of cause causatives in the Book of Mormon is 31.0, normalizing on the basis of a text length of 100,000 words. The normalized finite intensity for the King James Bible, not including the Apocrypha, is only 0.004.

This disparity is greater than the disparity for “it came to pass,” but the presence of even 3 finite causatives in the Bible offers an explanation for JS’s use of that form. Other Christian authors, including Jonathan Edwards, also used finite causatives that may have informed JS’s mental language bank.

The finite intensity in the pseudo-archaic texts with causatives is zero, since there are no examples of finite causatives at all, neither with the verb cause nor with the verb make. The pseudo-archaic authors who used causatives, in the corpus of twenty-five texts, had more than 100 opportunities to employ a finite [Page 229] cause causative, but they did not do so. These values will be revisited, in a comparative way, after the following section.

All good regarding the pseudo-archaic works.

In view of these stark contrasts in finite intensity, neither biblical influence nor pseudo-archaic influence on Book of Mormon causatives is supported.

This claim is valid for the pseudo-archaic texts, but it does not follow for the KJV because the KJV does have finite causatives that JS could have adopted (setting aside whether finite causatives were in the engravings on the plates).

On the other hand, the King James Bible’s extremely low finite intensity is similar to the pseudo-archaic intensity of zero, so biblical influence was possible.

That the pseudo-archaic authors ignored the KJV’s finite causatives does not mean that JS could not have embraced those finite causatives.

The Book of Mormon, in possibly having more than 100 finite causatives than earlier texts, has a finite intensity that could be uniquely high. In any event, it is an un-English pattern.

The best we can say is that it is “an un-English pattern” in publications. Gilbert recognized that the text was not ordinary published English. That’s why he wanted to edit it. Had he done so, he might have eliminated all or most of the finite causatives, which may also be the case for other published books as editors followed the trend away from such constructions.

Bunyanesque Influence on Book of Mormon English

William L. Davis has recently proposed that the English usage of John Bunyan (1628–1688) noticeably influenced Joseph Smith (1805–1844) in the spiritual language he chose in dictating the Book of Mormon in 1829.¹⁵ I first noted linguistic overlap ten years ago, also noting extensive non-overlap. Davis’s theory of Book of Mormon English sees a text with substantive and syntactic errors beyond those traditionally recognized as mistakes. Some explanations lack textual support; others are unlikely. I do not favor implausible naturalistic explanations over the possibility of specific revelation to Joseph Smith, since I do not view the latter as a zero-probability case.

This is a reasonable weighing of explanations, but Carmack consistently ignores the possibility that JS translated the engravings on the plates as he said, using his own language. He should at least recognize that this is not a zero-probability case.

One problem relevant to studies of Book of Mormon English is that the topic is vast. There is no way to properly treat the subject in a paper, not even in a short series of papers. Those who might think that Davis’s paper provides a thorough analysis of Book of Mormon English ought to know that he was limited in what he could cover due to the constraints of article length in journals.

Good point.

Davis mentioned the verb cause in his paper, but did not discuss it, presumably due to scope limitations. The normalized finite intensity of cause causatives in thirty-nine writings by John Bunyan is only 0.22.¹⁶ This is less than 1 percent of the Book of Mormon’s finite intensity. Moreover, there is no observable Bunyanesque influence in pseudo-archaic writings toward finite causatives.

Before comparing Bunyan’s causative usage further, it is worth mentioning two items of Davis’s analysis and two items of counterevidence to Bunyanesque influence on Book of Mormon English. There are many such items, which cannot be discussed here due to scope limitations.

As for what he covered in his paper, there were errors in his analysis. Here, I confine myself to the following two points. First, a number of [Page 230] times, vocabulary that Bunyan employed, which did not match the targeted vocabulary usage of the Book of Mormon, was used to explain it. For example, the preposition/conjunction but, although not used as a subordinating conjunction by Bunyan, was used to explain the possible use of but as a subordinating conjunction in the Book of Mormon.

Seems like a valid criticism of the Bunyan hypothesis.

Second, in order to explain the Book of Mormon’s un-English “if, and” expressions, non-matching biblical syntax was used. Specifically, the syntactic coordination found in Matthew 17:20 and Luke 17:6 does not match the coordination found in Helaman 10:9 and elsewhere, yet it is used to explain the odd syntax.¹⁷ A clear example of this distinctive, original Book of Mormon usage, after a when-clause, is the following: “when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword, that he rested a little, and he smote off the head of Shiz” (Ether 15:30).

I don’t see where Carmack got this quotation. The OM is missing this verse. The PM has the & represented here by the italicized and before “he smote off,” but of course there is no punctuation in the original text. (The editor replaced the & with a comma, which is how it appears in the 1830 edition, but Carmack shows it with the comma followed by and.)

Thus the passage could be read this way:

“And it came to pass that when Coriantumr had leaned upon his sword that he rested a little. And he smote the head of Shiz. And it came to pass that after he had smote off the head of Shiz that Shiz raised upon his hands and fell. And after that he had struggled for breath he died. And it came to pass...

Counterevidence to Bunyanesque Influence

Davis did not mention many items of counterevidence to his theory that Bunyanesque English influenced Joseph Smith. For example, the Book of Mormon has early modern periphrastic did usage that is not in Bunyan’s writings or pseudo-archaic texts or the King James Bible. The main one is archaic “did have,” which was very uncommon in Early Modern English. I have verified only about twelve early modern instances (late modern instances are emphatic, contrastive, legalistic, or poetic). Only the Book of Mormon has many examples of archaic “did have.” I specifically mentioned this aspect of the text in the 2015 paper.¹⁸

This is an interesting data point, but the late modern instances nevertheless exist. All it takes is one of these because of JS’s habit of repeating phraseology. Furthermore, the 16 instances of “did have” all appear on the translation of the abridged plates; none are in Nephi’s original plates. That suggests a difference between the language used by Mormon/Moroni vs Nephi and his successors.

Another item of counterevidence is the “if so be” and “if it so be” difference. Both phrases are primarily characteristic of earlier English, and both were popular in Late Middle English. Indeed, “if it so be” was more popular earlier than later, which is noticeable in a scan of EEBO.

Table 2 shows a categorical difference in usage. The Book of Mormon turns out to have the most instances of “if it so be” of any text. The writing with the second most is shown, authored in the early fifteenth century. The text with the highest known usage rate is shown as well. The Book of Mormon ranks second in usage rate, after this 1540 translation,¹⁹ but highest in intensity among known texts.

“If it so be” is one example of an extreme outlier in the Book of Mormon.²⁰ If this were a one-off match of archaism, this would not be noteworthy. That is not the case. The rhetorical if-phrase also triggers a subjunctive, modal shall in the following clause six times. This shows substantial archaic usage.

[Page 231] Table 2. A comparison of rhetorical “if so be” and “if it so be” usage.

Text | Corpus	if so be	if it so be	per 100k	Intensity
King James Bible (1611, with Apocrypha)	18 OT 10 NT 7	0	1.9	3.4
Pseudo-archaic corpus (25 texts, 1740–1888)	5	0	0.9	0.5
John Bunyan corpus (39 texts, 1656–1688)	9	0	0.6	0.5
Book of Mormon (1829, nonbiblical sections)	0	42	16.6	69.7
The birth of mankind (1540)	3	10	32.6	32.6
Lydgate’s Troy Book (1412–1420)21	13	21	9.8	20.6

 

This table omits D&C 3x. which supports two alternative scenarios. Either (i) JS dictated the revelations exactly as he heard or saw them (i.e., not his language), or (ii) he expressed “after the manner of his language” the thoughts he received by revelation, whether influenced by the translation of the BM or his language before translating the plates.

And if it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, (D&C 18:15)

if it so be that ye do it with an eye single to my glory (D&C 27:2)

And it mattereth not unto me, after a little, if it so be that they fill their mission, (D&C 61:22)

The two forms (with and without “that” at the end) also appear in the BM: “if it so be that” 1830 39x, current 34x;  “if it so be” 1830 BM 42x current 37x.

Two instances in the BM were changed from “if it so be” (1830) to “if it be so” (current).

And if it be so that these last grafts shall grow, and bring forth the natural fruit, then shall ye prepare the way for them, that they may grow. (Jacob 5:64) Changed from 1830, which read: And if it so be that these last grafts…

And if it be so that the water come in upon thee, behold, ye shall stop the hole, that ye may not perish in the flood. (Ether 2:20) Changed from 1830, which read: And if it so be that…

These changes reflect the wording in the KJV OT (2) and Edwards.

22 And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to inquire of the Lord. (Genesis 25:22)

17 If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, O king. (Daniel 3:17)

Given JS’s propensity to change/modify/blend biblical passages, changing “if it be so” into “if it so be” and then repeating the phrase throughout the text is consistent with the other patterns Carmack observes.

JE uses “And if it be so” frequently, including passages that contain nonbiblical BM phrases such as “state of happiness” and “brightness of hope.”

And if it be so that there be an eternal state of happiness in another world set before us for us to seek after, then how rational are the Christian doctrines and precepts of heavenly mindedness

And if it be so, then let everyone judge whether this don't suppose a free choice going before the free act of will, or whether an act of choice don't go before that act of the will which proceeds from it. And if it be thus with all free acts of the will

Therefore, if it be so , that God gives the pure heart on purpose to fit and prepare for the seeing of himself, he will obtain his own end.

And therefore undoubtedly, if it be so that sin does very much consist in hardness of heart, and so in the want of pious affections of heart; holiness does consist very much in those pious affections.

Therefore, wo be unto the Gentiles if it so be that they harden their hearts against the Lamb of God. (1 Nephi 14:6)

Or that there is no more in misery, than the loss or absence of happiness? And if it be so , that the death threatened to Adam can, with certainty, be opposed only to the life given to Adam, when God created him; I think, a state of perfect, perpetual and hopeless misery is properly opposed to that state Adam was in, when God created him.

And we are there told what the consequence was in the words that follow: "therefore came a great wrath from the Lord of hosts." If it be so that what I teach be the very word of God by his prophets and apostles, then if any of my people refuse [to] hear me and resist my preaching, they will be in some measure guilty

Wherefore, he will preserve the righteous by his power, even if it so be that the fulness of his wrath must come (1 Nephi 22:17)

Understand me right; what I say is this: if it be so , be indeed the word of the Holy One of Israel by his prophets and apostles, then you are guilty of the very thing here described if you resist my preaching this doctrine and refuse to hear it when preached.

and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God. (2 Nephi 28:8)

Now some may be ready to say, if it be so , what need we trouble ourselves about good works, and what provision is there made for the holy living of believers? If they have believed in Christ, they may live as wickedly as they please, and enjoy the pleasure of sin as much as they please.

And if it so be that they will not believe these things, then shall the greater things be withheld from them, unto their condemnation. (3 Nephi 26:10)

Now if it be so , that persons will be judged at the last day much more according to their moral works among men than according to their outward acts of worship

ye must stand before the judgment-seat of Christ, to be judged according to your works; and if it so be that ye are righteous (Mormon 6:21)

 

And if it be so that everyone that has any true love to God in him loves him above the world, then it will follow that everyone that is in a state of salvation loves God more than the world

if on the contrary, divine love prevails, and comes into lively exercise, this brings in the brightness of hope, and drives away black lust, and fear with it. Love is the spirit of adoption, or the childlike principle; if that slumbers, men fall under fear, which is the spirit of bondage, or the servile principle: and so on the contrary. And if it be so, that love, or the spirit of adoption, be carried to a great height, it quite drives away all fear, and gives full assurance

One interesting recent discovery is that this phrase exhibits an uneven distributional pattern in the text. Other linguistic features do as well, suggesting a division of the text into two sections. If we follow the order that Joseph Smith dictated the text in 1829, textual usage often motivates dividing the text into a section going from Mosiah 1 to 3 Nephi 7, and from 3 Nephi 8 to Words of Mormon. The first section is approximately 57.5 percent of the dictation (counting nonbiblical words). The forty-two instances of “if it so be” in these two sections of the dictation exhibit a 3|39 split. In percentage terms, the distribution of rhetorical “if it so be” usage is 7%|93%, in a 57.5%|42.5% division of the text. Usage rates are sharply different; almost all instances of “if it so be” occur in the second, shorter part of the dictation.

Another way to look at this is dividing the text between the Abridged plates (17) and the Original plates (20, of which 12 in 1 Nephi).

The most dramatic distributional difference in the text occurs with archaic, biblical “after that S” usage, whose raw distribution is 0|115 when using a 3 Nephi 7|8 boundary (examples begin at 3 Nephi 12:1). In a 57.5%|42.5% division of the text, then, the percentage usage of “after that S” is 0%|100%.

Another way to look at this is dividing the text between the Abridged plates (18) and the Original plates (1, Jacob 6:2 “after that the end soon cometh”)

There are at least thirty of these English usage shifts noticeable in the text, including these two.²² My interpretation of this textual reality is as follows: Thirty or more shifts show that a large-scale English-language usage shift was not accidental. But the shifts also could not have occurred from a conscious decision on Joseph Smith’s part. The complex and extensive nature of the usage shifts was too diverse for him to have been the one who controlled the text.

This is persuasive evidence against the composition theory, but the U&T scenario has Joseph translating the engravings on the plates; i.e., these language shifts, if real, reflect changes in the source.

Taken together, shifts in English usage suggest multiple English authorship. For those who reject revelation, this is a problem, since Joseph Smith was the only one who dictated the text.

The composition theory would explain multiple authorship.

For those who [Page 232] think he worded the text from revelation, this is a problem, since he was the only one who dictated the text.

For those who think JS translated the engravings on the plates, this is not a problem at all. But Carmack does not consider that an option, so he ignores it.

Bunyan’s complementation tendencies after cause and suffer

The strongest case to be made of similarity between Book of Mormon causatives and John Bunyan’s usage is found in The Holy War (1682). The normalized finite intensity is 2.4,²³ one-twelfth of the Book of Mormon’s usage. The intensity of the 1620 translation mentioned above (The Anatomy of Arminianisme), 9.8, is the only one noted that somewhat approaches the Book of Mormon.²⁴ Table 3 compares texts and corpora.

Table 3. Finite cause causatives and normalized finite intensity.

Text | Corpus	n	Finite.intensity
Book of Mormon (1829)	136	31.0
The Anatomy of Arminianisme (1620)	18	9.8
The Holy War (1682)	7	2.4
John Bunyan corpus (39 texts, 1656–1688)	24	0.22
King James Bible (1611)	3	0.004
Pseudo-archaic corpus (25 texts, 1740–1888)	0	0

 

Although the 1620 translated text does not explain how someone in Joseph Smith’s position could have dictated so many finite causatives, it does provide the profile of a person who might have done so on their own: an earlier translator who was translating from Latin or French into English (or from another language with a higher degree of finite causatives than English).²⁵

Some of the twenty-five pseudo-archaic authors in the corpus I searched (see note 1) could have been familiar with Bunyanesque language. In fact, some of the more literate authors were probably more familiar with Bunyan’s writings than Joseph Smith. For example, Roger O’Connor was a man of extensive reading and literary acquirements²⁶ and Richard Grant White was a Shakespearean scholar. Seven finite causatives by Bunyan in The Holy War did not prompt these authors to produce any finite causatives.²⁷ While no one consciously notes finite rates of causatives except linguists, pseudo-archaic evidence argues that any possible Bunyanesque influence on causative formation was more likely infinitival. Perhaps Bunyan’s strong preference for infinitive causatives in dozens of writings (87.4 percent) was actually the salient aspect of his language that they internalized.

[Page 233]

Consider also that Bunyan never employed finite complements after the suasive verb suffer, in at least 120 instances. This datapoint shows that for Bunyan, finite complementation tendencies after cause and suffer were distinct. They were not both 0 or 12 percent finite.

The Book of Mormon has sixty-three finite complements after suffer (63.6 percent finite). Bunyanesque influence is contraindicated. According to current searches, sixty-three is about forty more than any other text. This is one additional example of syntax that is sharply different from Bunyan’s early modern usage. It is also another example of an extreme outlier in the Book of Mormon that points away from nineteenth-century, monolingual English authorship.

This evidence also points to translation of the underlying language on the plates, as well as JS’s propensity to repeat phraseology.

Ditransitive Causatives

The Book of Mormon, as originally dictated, had twelve instances of ditransitive complementation after the verb cause. (The current edition has eleven.) For example, “they did cause the Lamanites that they should harden their hearts” (Alma 21:3; general case: “cause_[verb] <noun.phrase> that <pronoun> <verb.phrase>”). The 1620 text (The Anatomy of Arminianisme) does not have any ditransitive causatives. Database searches currently indicate that twelve ditransitive causatives are three times as many as occur in any other text. The text found with four is a 1616 translation from several Romance languages, with structural borrowing primarily from French syntax.²⁸

This data supports Carmack’s argument against the pseudo-archaic texts, but also supports JS’s habit of blending biblical passages and repeating phraseology.

Five ditransitive causatives in the Book of Mormon have two co-referential pronouns, as in “he will cause it that it shall soon overtake you” (3 Nephi 29:4; the first it was later removed). Four of these pronominal examples have a subjunctive, modal should; these four persist in the text:

and did cause us that we should hope for our deliverance in him (Alma 58:11)

causing them that they should suffer all manner of afflictions (Alma 60:17)

to cause us that we should believe in some great and marvelous thing (Helaman 16:20)

tempting them and causing them that they should do great wickedness in the land (3 Nephi 3:3)

[Page 234]

Obsolescence of ditransitive causatives

Lowrey wrote that ditransitive cause syntax was obsolete by around 1700 (the end of the early modern period).²⁹ 

Maybe a good point. But also maybe JS innovation based on other causatives.

In all, I have verified at least forty ditransitive cause causatives, dating between 1430 and 1727.³⁰ So the above language is not nineteenth-century phraseology, and Joseph Smith did not speak with this kind of language.

No one knows how Joseph spoke in 1829.

Some do not believe in the obsolescence of any textual usage in the Book of Mormon, including its twelve ditransitive causatives. They reject independent linguistic assessments such as Lowrey’s.

Maybe a good point.

The obsolescence of ditransitive causatives shows that potential analogical influence is not always operative. This syntax could have been used into the future, but it died out. There were analogs that conceivably could have prompted persistence of the construction, yet there was no persistence. One analog that potentially could have maintained the use was ditransitive command syntax, which continued to be used sporadically.

When a past usage has become obsolete, then it was no one’s native expression anymore. Thus, Joseph Smith did not use his native expression when he dictated these.

But the evidence is only that it was obsolete in print, due to editing, not that no one spoke this way.

This observation is supported by dictating the causative complementation pattern differently from how he spoke. There are other linguistic features in the text that he did not dictate according to his native expression. He did not dictate “it supposeth me” syntax according to his native expression.³¹ 

Pure speculation.

He did not dictate “they which” in object position according to his native expression (for example, “I remember they which are upon the isles of the sea”; 2 Nephi 29:7; one of twenty-three).³² He did not dictate “if/when/after/as/because . . . and” syntax according to his native expression (more than forty instances). He did not dictate some obsolete vocabulary items according to his native expression. And so on and so forth.

This is all mere speculation.

“Did cause” and purposive syntax with the noun cause

Alma 58:11 has “did cause,” where did is a past-tense marker, as in Early Modern English. At least twenty-one of these occur in causative constructions. Searches have indicated that the Book of Mormon has more “did cause” than any known text (forty-seven instances). The closest text was published in 1597 and has thirty-nine instances.³³ The normalized intensity of “did cause” in these two texts is unmatched.³⁴ EEBO indicates that archaic “did cause” usage rates peaked during the 1590s (1591–1600; 152 instances; 46.1 million words).³⁵

Frequency is not relevant.

English from the end of the sixteenth century ought to be of interest [Page 235] to readers of the Book of Mormon since the text has a substantial amount of syntactic usage that was most prevalent in the history of the language around this time. One example that has received little or no attention is this phraseology: “for this cause that he might not bring upon him injustice” (Alma 55:19; general case: “for this cause that X may/might (not) <infinitive.phrase>.”)

The noun cause conveys an archaic meaning of purpose in these. The Book of Mormon has seven instances,³⁶ which is a high level of usage and a historical outlier. Only two texts have been found to have more, both published in the 1580s and both translations of Calvin.³⁷ Among early modern texts with at least two instances of this syntax, the Book of Mormon ranks seventh in per-word usage, right between these two Calvin translations. In intensity, these texts rank higher.

These two linguistic features of the text are examples of many similar items found in the Book of Mormon. The number of outliers makes it a statistically weak claim that Joseph Smith accidentally or deliberately expanded rare and obsolete English usage in dozens of different ways.

This is an assumption again. JS may have remembered and/or liked this usage.

Bunyan and Malory

John Bunyan (1628–1688) employed one ditransitive causative in his writings, in The Holy War (1682). It has repeated pronouns but no modal auxiliary: “and you shall cause me that I [ø] dwell securely with you.”³⁸ This did not lead to pseudo-archaic imitation. Thus, there is no support for saying that this ditransitive causative prompted Joseph Smith to imitate it.

This is mixing two arguments. The absence in pseudo-archaic texts is good evidence that Joseph did not imitate them, but is irrelevant to whether Joseph was familiar with Bunyan.

Malory’s Late Middle English usage is a closer match with the Book of Mormon’s ditransitive causative modal usage:

and that shall cause me that I shall not be known (Malory, Morte d’Arthur (1470–85), book 7, chapter 27, spelling modernized)

he will cause it that it shall soon overtake you (3 Nephi 29:4)

he can cause the earth that it shall pass away (1 Nephi 17:46)

Malory’s English usage is also a strong match with the Book of Mormon’s use of whereby to mean “why?” (Ether 8:9), but if to mean “unless” (Mosiah 3:19), and plural mights (ten and twelve instances, respectively), as well as other usage.

[Page 236] Scribal Shaping

One reviewer of this paper provided a list of conceivable naturalistic explanations for the Book of Mormon’s causative complex. However, there is no pseudo-archaic or general textual support for these explanations. The one suggestion that was new to me was “scribal shaping.” Even if Oliver Cowdery had shaped the language, there is no pseudo-archaic support for him shaping causatives the way they read.

Did the reviewer consider Edwards?

Skousen has addressed this topic, without using the above term, in presentations and in a recent text-critical publication, The Early Transmission of the Text.³⁹ There is manuscript evidence against scribal shaping by Oliver. He read back to Joseph Smith the text he had scribed, and in fifteen cases changes to manuscript readings were made, from one acceptable reading to another equally acceptable reading, presumably under Joseph’s direction.

This is an assumption based on scanty evidence. JS and OC could easily have discussed different ways to phrase concepts.

Interpretive Conclusion

In summary, there is no earlier textual support for someone in Joseph Smith’s position composing so many finite and ditransitive causatives. The idea that the text was specifically revealed explains why his 1829 dictation ended up with these.

It is one of several explanations, including JS’s own; i.e., that he translated the engravings on the plates.

A revealed text also explains various features of the original manuscript, as Skousen has pointed out. A revealed text also explains the thirty-six closely quoted (non-paraphrastic) biblical passages, but with more than 700 differences from biblical readings, some complex.⁴⁰

Also explained by memorization of the biblical passages.

Bunyanesque influence is not supported textually in many different ways; most of these could not be discussed here due to scope limitations. Though there is overlap in linguistic features, the Book of Mormon has many not found in his writings. Some pseudo-archaic authors were probably as familiar as Joseph Smith with Bunyan’s language, yet they did not employ the Book of Mormon’s preferentially finite verbal complementation. As noted, suffer syntax is utterly different.

Again, this is evidence that JS did not copy the pseudo-archaic books, not that JS did not draw on other books he had read.

We also learn from the causative complex that Joseph Smith did not speak the way the verbal complementation reads in more than 500 instances. He did not use his native expression to word ditransitive causatives, similar to “it supposeth me” and many vocabulary items. He did not word the personal relative pronoun system, since it is not the way he spoke, nor is there biblical or pseudo-archaic support [Page 237] for it.⁴¹ He did not word the uneven textual distribution of “if it so be” and “after that S.” And so on and so forth.

This is all pure speculation.

 

1. Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (New York: Longman, 1985). “The mandative subjunctive is . . . formal and rather legalistic in style” §3.59, p. 357; “The indirect directive construction is rare and formal in comparison with the similar infinitive construction” §16.59. pp. 1212–13 [example of indirect directive: “She petitioned the king that her father (might/should) be pardoned”]; “The alternative that-clause construction, however, is more formal” §16.63, p. 1216.

2. Primary sources: Early English Books Online (EEBO): about 60,000 texts (1473–1700) and 1.45 billion words; quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebogroup. Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) has about 195,000 texts (1701–1800) and 9.3 billion searchable words (mostly late modern, but many earlier texts); gale.com/primary-sources/eighteenth-century-collections-online. Evans Early American Imprint Collection: 5,012 texts, about 100 million words, freely available as a WordCruncher ebook, quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans. These sources are all found online in the University of Michigan Library’s digital collection. I search all of the above texts using WordCruncher.

Two other sources are Google Books, books.google.com/advanced_book_search and Google Books Ngram Viewer, books.google.com/ngrams. In 2024, Google Books had about 20.5 billion words from 1801 to 1829, but it had only about 4.9 billion words from 1470 to 1800. This overrepresentation misleads the perceptions of casual researchers.

Additionally, I use a corpus of twenty-five pseudo-archaic texts containing approximately 582,500 words. This corpus includes twelve longer texts (close to 561,300 words total): Chronicle of the Kings (1740), Book of Jasher (1751), American Chronicles (1775), American Revolution (1793), Napoleon the Tyrant [Page 238](1809), History of Anti-Christ (1811), Late War (1816), Chronicles of Eri (1822), Ignatius and Polycarp (1827), Sacred Roll (1843), Healing of the Nations (1855), and New Gospel of Peace (1863). Because of their length, and the possibility of sustained language use, these are the most important texts for comparison with the Book of Mormon.

The pseudo-archaic corpus also includes thirteen shorter texts (close to 21,100 words total): Book of Preferment (1742), French Gasconade (1743), Parable Against Persecution (1755), Chronicles of Nathan (1758), Samuel the Squomicutite (1763), Book of America (1766), Chapter 37th (1782), Chronicles of John (1812), Book of Chronicles (1812), Chronicles of Andrew (1815), Muttonville Chronicle (1830), Reformer Chronicles (1832), and Chronicles of Gotham (1888).

I have made this corpus freely available in WordCruncher, wordcruncher.com. Anyone can download the app and find the corpus in the book repository and search it precisely. To make this corpus, I consulted Eran Shalev, a pseudo-biblical expert, and Duane Johnson, who gathered many different pseudo-biblical texts more than ten years ago. More details are provided in Stanford Carmack, “Is the Book of Mormon a Pseudo-Archaic Text?,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 28 (2018): 177–232, interpreterfoundation.org/journal/is-the-book-of-mormon-a-pseudo-archaic-text.

All quotations from the Book of Mormon in this paper are taken from Royal Skousen, ed., The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). A slightly modified version is available as a searchable WordCruncher e-book with part-of-speech tagging in the WordCruncher book repository.

3. Information on this program is found at wordcruncher.com.

4. For background, see Stanford Carmack, “The Book of Mormon’s Complex Finite Cause Syntax,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 49 (2021): 113–136, interpreterfoundation.org/journal/the-book-of-mormons-complex-finite-cause-syntax; Stanford Carmack and Royal Skousen, “Archaic Syntactic Structures in the Book of Mormon,” in Royal Skousen, Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, vol. 3, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, pt. 3, The Nature of the Original Language (Provo, UT: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies [FARMS] and BYU Studies, 2018), 575–84. The relevant portion of the second essay grew out of a working paper on Book of Mormon causatives that I began in 2014.

5. Alma 10:13 is included in the infinitive count of this paper. It was not counted in the 2018 text-critical essay cited at the end of note 4 herein.

6. 1 Nephi 20:21, 1 Nephi 21:8, 2 Nephi 13:12, 2 Nephi 19:16, 2 Nephi 23:10, 2 Nephi 23:11, 3 Nephi 12:32.

7. 2 Nephi 7:2, 2 Nephi 8:4, 2 Nephi 21:15, 2 Nephi 24:3, 2 Nephi 24:16, 3 Nephi 12:45, 3 Nephi 22:3.

8. Complex differences are by and large ignored by those who say that Joseph Smith read from a Bible as he dictated the biblical sections.

[Page 239]9. 1 Nephi 17:46: “he can cause that rough places be made smooth and smooth places shall be broken up.”

10. Hubert Cuyckens, “Exploring English historical syntax,” in Explorations in English Historical Syntax, ed. Hubert Cuyckens, Hendrik De Smet, Liesbet Heyvaert, Charlotte Maekelberghe (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2018), 12.

11. Brian Lowrey, “Finite causative complements in Middle English,” in Explorations in English Historical Syntax, 106–108.

12. History of Joseph Smith by His Mother, Lucy Mack Smith, ed. Preston Nibley, (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1958). See also “Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1844–1845,” Joseph Smith Papers, josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1844-1845; and “Lucy Mack Smith, History, 1845,” (The History of Lucy Smith, Mother of the Prophet), Joseph Smith Papers, josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/lucy-mack-smith-history-1845/5. This history has approximately 90,000 words. I do not know how many words are original to Lucy.

13. Peter du Moulin, The Anatomy of Arminianisme [. . .] (London, 1620), name.umdl.umich.edu/A69245.

14. Pietro Martire Vermigli, The Common Places of the Most Famous and Renowned Diuine Doctor Peter Martyr [. . .] (London,1583), name.umdl.umich.edu/A14350; Charles Estienne, Maison Rustique, or The Country Farme [. . .] (London, 1616), name.umdl.umich.edu/A00419; Pierre de La Primaudaye, The French Academie Fully Discoursed and Finished in Foure Books [. . .] (London,1618), name.umdl.umich.edu/A05105; Felix Platter, Platerus Golden Practice of Physick: Fully and Plainly Discovering [. . .] (London, 1664), name.umdl.umich.edu/A90749.

15. William L. Davis, “Joseph Smith’s Spiritual Language: The Presence of Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon,” Dialogue 58, no. 2 (2025): 41–77.

16. Approximately 1.4 million words, twenty-four finite causatives, 191 total causatives, a 12.6 percent finite rate.

Bunyan’s writings, in publication order according to the EEBO database, begin with name.umdl.umich.edu and proceed as follows: ~/A30208, ~/A77832, ~/A77813, ~/A30128, ~/A30158, ~/A30200, ~/A30143, ~/A30152, ~/A30212, ~/A30136, ~/A30137, ~/A30138, ~/A30198, ~/A30159, ~/A30167, ~/A30209, ~/A30130, ~/A30170, ~/A30211, ~/A30164, ~/A30127, ~/A30168, ~/A58733, ~/A30153, ~/A30202, ~/B01830, ~/A30141, ~/A30197, ~/A30122, ~/A30125, ~/A30139, ~/A30206, ~/A30213, ~/A30214, ~/A30118, ~/A30160, ~/A30150, ~/A30201; plus The Holy War (1682), available in the ECCO database and elsewhere.

17. The “and it shall remove” in Matthew 17:20 begins an additional main clause following a main clause, while the “and it shall be done” in Helaman 10:9 begins a main clause following a subordinate clause. This leads to English grammaticality of clause-initial and in the Matthew and Luke examples, and ungrammaticality of clause-initial and in the Book of Mormon examples.

18. Stanford Carmack, “The Implications of Past-Tense Syntax in the Book of Mormon,” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture 14 (2015): 153, 173, [Page 240]interpreterfoundation.org/journal/the-implications-of-past-tense-syntax-in-the-book-of-mormon.

19. Eucharius Roeslin, The Byrth of Mankinde [. . .] (London, 1540), name.umdl.umich.edu/A10887.

20. When most researchers draw conclusions about the Book of Mormon’s English usage based on outliers, they mention those that can easily be identified, such as “it came to pass,” “behold,” and “yea.” They do not mention outliers such as “if it so be,” “save it were,” “save it be,” or “had spake.” (Here I have only mentioned outliers that can be pointed out simply.)

21. John Lydgate, Lydgate’s Troy Book: A.D. 1412–20, 3 vols. (London: Early English Text Society, 1906–10), archive.org/details/lydgatestroybono9701lydguoft, archive.org/details/lydgatestroyno9702lydguoft, archive.org/details/lydgatestroybookpartthreeber.

22. There is also uneven distribution of other features such as the following: “because that S,” “before that S,” “whoso,” “wherefore,” “it must needs be,” object “they,” the conjunctions “save” and “except,” and the personal relative pronouns “that” and “who.”

23. Approximately 97,000 words, seven finite causatives, twenty-one total causatives, a one-third finite rate.

24. Approximately 143,700 words, eighteen finite causatives, twenty-three total causatives, a 78.3 percent finite rate. This is the only text I have noted (besides the Book of Mormon) with at least twenty causatives and more finite than infinitive causatives.

25. A recent 2017 translation of an early seventeenth-century Yiddish text has sixty-six finite causatives. Morris M. Faierstein, ed., Ze’enah U-Re’enah: A Critical Translation into English (Boston: De Gruyter, 2017). The translation data are interesting but irrelevant to authorship of the Book of Mormon’s finite causatives. As it turns out, the cause causatives are not even 25 percent finite, and the normalized finite intensity is only 2.9, less than one-tenth of the Book of Mormon’s. (The numbers used to determine the intensity are as follows: n_[finite]=66; n_[total]=279; 23.7% finite; 540,000 words.)

The finite causatives of this translation are historically atypical in their embedded modal use. The main oddity is that finite causatives have modal will (9×) but no modal shall. Overall, the embedded modal use, the low finite rate, the low finite intensity, and the lack of ditransitive causatives mean that it is not a close match with the Book of Mormon. The data were hastily pointed out to me as evidence that substantial finite use might have been expected in Joseph Smith’s dictation.

26. John P. Prendergast, “Dangan and Roger O’Connor,” The Irish Monthly 12, no. 127 (1884): 35.

27. There are many very short pseudo-archaic texts in old newspapers. There could be a finite causative in one of those. Even so, there is no possible sustained finite use in short pseudo-archaic texts.

28. The English of the following text has four ditransitive causatives. Charles [Page 241]Estienne, Maison rustique, or, The countrey farme [. . .], trans. Richard Surflet and Geruase Markham (London, 1616), name.umdl.umich.edu/A00419.

29. Lowrey, “Finite causative complements,” 125. According to Lowrey, the ditransitive causative, which he refers to as V+NP+that, “remains productive, albeit marginally, until the end of the [Middle English] period and even beyond, examples being found until [Early Modern English].” In a 2021 paper, I was more conservative than Lowrey in estimating the obsolescence of ditransitive cause syntax, noting a latest natural language example dated 1744. This potential example, however, is a false positive, and another example that I dated as a1732 (that is, before 1732, the year of the author’s death) dates internally to 1723, leaving a 1727 example as the latest one.

Itemized details: The ditransitive causative dated a1732 on page 127 of my “Complex Finite Cause Syntax” paper dates internally to 1723. The ditransitive dated 1727 seems to be accurately dated. The latest example given in this 2021 paper, dated 1744, is a false positive. The 1737 second edition shows that it is an infinitive construction, because of a comma that is missing in the 1744 fourth edition: “or cause them that they have, to be new tinned” (emphasis added). In other words, “cause them to be new tinned.”

30. For a large sampling of these ditransitive cause causatives, see Carmack, “Complex Finite Cause Syntax,” 124–27.

Late nineteenth-century examples are resultative in nature, such as the expression “caused it that it should . . . ” occurring here: babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924106296399&seq=323. This language is equivalent to “made it so that it would . . . . ”

31. Stanford Carmack, “Why the Oxford English Dictionary (and not Webster’s 1828),” Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture15 (2015): 65–77, interpreterfoundation.org/journal/why-the-oxford-english-dictionary-and-not-websters-1828.

32. Stanford Carmack, “Book of Mormon Grammar and Translation,” BYU Studies 63, no. 3 (2024), 59. scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol63/iss3/4.

33. Raoul Lefevre, The auncient historie, of the destruction of Troy [. . .] (London, 1597), name.umdl.umich.edu/A05236.

34. Normalized intensity of “did cause” calculated per 10,000 words as 87.5 and 71.7.

35. The 1580s was the next highest decade of “did cause” usage (128 instances; 1581–1590; 48.3 million words).

36. In dictation order: Alma 9:25, Alma 55:19, Helaman 12:22, 3 Nephi 21:6, 1 Nephi 4:17, 1 Nephi 4:36, 2 Nephi 10:15.

37. Jean Calvin, A harmonie vpon the three Euangelists [. . .], trans. Eusebius Pagit (London, 1584), name.umdl.umich.edu/A16078; M. Iohn Caluin vpon the Actes of the Apostles [. . .], trans. Christopher Fetherstone (London, 1585), name.umdl.umich.edu/A17642. The 1584 translation probably has the most ever, twenty-three; the 1585 translation has at least eleven.

38. Carmack, “Complex Finite Cause Syntax,” 127.

[Page 242]39. Royal Skousen, Critical Text Project of the Book of Mormon, vol. 3, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, pt. 7, The Early Transmission of the Text (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2024), 71–76.

40. Royal Skousen, Critical Text Project of the Book of Mormon, vol. 3, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, pt. 5, The King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: FARMS and BYU Studies, 2019), 19, 182, 210.

41. Stanford Carmack, “Personal Relative Pronoun Usage in the Book of Mormon: An Important Authorship Diagnostic,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 49 (2021): 5–36, interpreterfoundation.org/journal/personal-relative-pronoun-usage-in-the-book-of-mormon-an-important-authorship-diagnostic.

About Stanford Carmack

 

Stanford Carmack has a linguistics and a law degree from Stanford University as well as a doctorate in Hispanic Languages and Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in historical syntax and textual analysis. He currently researches Book of Mormon syntax and lexis as they relate to earlier English usage and he contributed to aspects of the Book of Mormon critical text project carried out by Royal Skousen.

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4  Comment(s)

William L Davis, 05-10-2026 at 7:59 am

reply

I have a question for Stan Carmack.

It has come to my attention that when speaking about my essay in Dialogue, “Joseph Smith’s Spiritual Language,” you made the following public claims:

“Various people were involved in the creation of the article. They were apparently unable to clean up the many errors they ought to have recognized.”

Later, you state: “This important syntactic and semantic difference does not appear to have been understood by Davis, his colleagues, his reviewers, or his editors.”

These statements suggest that you believe that certain “colleagues” were involved in the “creation of the article,” above and beyond the normal feedback provided in a standard peer-reviewed process by “his reviewers, or his editors.”

I would appreciate it if you would clarify precisely what you mean by those statements.

Replies

Stanford Carmack, 05-11-2026 at 12:35 pm

reply

See p.41, special thanks to 3 listed persons. Other item involving but as subord. conj. was explained sufficiently. I have addressed additional impt. points since a response paper was rejected w/o review.

Replies

William L Davis, 05-11-2026 at 3:17 pm

reply

Your response is not a clarification. It’s frankly cryptic and evasive.

If you are suggesting that your statement, “Various people were involved in the creation of the article,” refers simply to the standard feedback that anyone would receive in the course of a peer-review process, then such a statement would be irrelevant and unnecessary, because it would apply to anyone who has written a peer-reviewed article.

So, I’m offering you a chance to be specific and direct about your claim: Are you asserting that you believe that multiple people were involved in the research, conceptualization, and composition of this article, above and beyond the feedback provided by a normal peer review process? Yes or No?

Your reference to the fact that I thanked a few friends for their support of my work hardly constitutes their involvement “in the creation of the article.” So, to be clear, they were not collaborators involved in the creation of this article, nor were any other “colleagues,” as you put it, involved in the research and writing. Your assumption that my thanks to them somehow reflects their participation in the creation of the article is false, inaccurate, and frankly misleading.

The final line of your cryptic response does not make sense to me: “I have addressed additional impt. points since a response paper was rejected w/o review.” That statement has no relevance to your assertion about the origins of my essay.

_____

Separate notes:

 

Wayne Sentinel, Oct 16, 1829: “The Editor of the Freeman can imitate Moses in nothing except it be his modesty.”

https://pioneerlibrarysystem.advantage-preservation.com/viewer/?k=%22except%20it%22&i=f&d=01011817-12311829&m=between&ord=k1&fn=wayne_sentinel_usa_new_york_palmyra_18291016_english_2&df=1&dt=10

Wayne Sentinel, Jan 30, 1829: “they hope, therefore, that these questions will not be blended or connected, when in fact there is no just relation between them, except it be in substituting new banks in the place and stead of the old ones….”

https://pioneerlibrarysystem.advantage-preservation.com/viewer/?k=%22except%20it%22&i=f&d=01011817-12311829&m=between&ord=k1&fn=wayne_sentinel_usa_new_york_palmyra_18290130_english_2&df=1&dt=10

Hervey: