Pre-print of Revisions in the Analysis of Archaic Language in the Book of Mormon

In The Nature of the Original Language [of the Book of Mormon] (hereafter, NOL), Royal Skousen and Stanford Carmack indicated that additional research into the language of the Book of Mormon might mean that some of the archaic words, phrases, and expressions identified at the beginning of NOL would eventually be discovered to have also occurred later in the 1700s. They were hampered by an inability to fully use the Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) database. Now, however, much of that difficulty has been overcome, and Carmack has spent the last year or so reviewing the potentially archaic words, phrases, and expressions discussed in NOL. (During the past few months, Skousen has reviewed these potential archaisms as well.)

In what follows—a pre-print of what will appear in part 8 of volume 3 of the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project—Skousen and Carmack report on what they have found. Some of the examples given in NOL did not die out as early as they had proposed. But a good many solid examples still hold up as almost certainly or probably archaic.

The results are important. For one thing, they illustrate the care and integrity with which the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project has been conducted since its inception. The Interpreter Foundation is honored to be associated with this effort.

— Dan Peterson

Links to the databases mentioned in this write-up:

OED

Oxford English Dictionary: online, third edition [in progress]
https://www.oed.com/

EEBO

Early English Books Online (texts from the late 1400s up through 1700)
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebogroup/
Search Engine: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?page=simple;g=eebogroup

ECCO

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (texts from 1700 through 1800)
https://www.gale.com/primary-sources/eighteenth-century-collections-online

DOST

A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (texts from before 1700)
https://dsl.ac.uk/

Google Books

Advanced Book Search
https://books.google.com/advanced_book_search

NOTE: This is a pre-print of what will appear in part 8 of Volume III: The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon. As such, we have not made it available for downloading or printing. Please refrain from bypassing these restrictions.

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