Periphrastic Did

Throughout the Book of Mormon, the verb did (including do and does) is often used as an auxiliary verb, as in the phrase “his soul did rejoice” (1 Nephi 1:15).¹ Grammatically speaking, this type of past-tense usage to affirm simple declarative statements is periphrastic.² Periphrastic did usage can be divided into three main subcategories:³

1. Adjacency: Where did is immediately followed by the verb it is affirming.

Example: “his soul did rejoice” (1 Nephi 1:15)

2. Intervening Subject: Where a subject is inserted between did and the verb it is affirming.

Example: “on this wise did he speak unto me” (Jacob 7:6)

3. Intervening Adverbial: Where an adverb or an adverbial phrase is inserted between did and the verb.

Example: “I Nephi did again with my brethren go forth into the wilderness” (1 Nephi 7:3)

Overall, the Book of Mormon uses periphrastic did over 1700 times with over 400 different verbs, resulting in a total usage rate of 20.2%.⁴ This further breaks down into 92.2% adjacency (1,627 instances), 4.4% intervening subject (78 instances), and 3.4% intervening adverbial (59 instances).⁵

Periphrastic Did in Early Modern English

According to Stanford Carmack and Royal Skousen, “Beginning in the 1530s and continuing throughout the rest of that century, the periphrastic did flourished as a past-tense marker in positive statements.”⁶ For some texts in this time period, periphrastic did is used more than 50% of the time, while others have lower frequencies, ranging down to 5% or less.⁷ Often usage in this period “ebbs and flows” within a single text, as it does in the Book of Mormon.⁸ The following chart compares an unusually high concentration in a passage from 1 Nephi with a text written by William Marshall in 1543.⁹

Overall, “the Book of Mormon’s past-tense usage agrees with Early Modern English usage on multiple levels, particularly the patterns prevalent from the mid-1500s to the last part of the 1500s and then extending, but diminishing, throughout the 1600s until disappearing around 1700.”¹⁰ Areas of similarity include “rate of occurrence, syntactic distribution, and individual verb use.”¹¹ The following chart compares the rate of occurrence and syntactic distribution for the Book of Mormon and 7 texts from the 1500s.¹²

Naturally, there is variation among all these texts, but several of them have percentages comparable to the Book of Mormon in one or more domain.¹³ Interestingly, the texts with higher overall levels of periphrastic did also tend to have high levels of adjacency, just like the Book of Mormon. The works written by Elyot and Machyn are particularly similar. The Book of Mormon also sometimes parallels Early Modern usage rates on a verb-by-verb basis. The following chart provides comparative rates for 13 verbs analyzed by Carmack, 10 of which have similar rates of periphrastic did usage.¹⁴

Periphrastic Did through the Centuries

Generally speaking, the overall rate of periphrastic did in the English language has always been comparatively low. Although some authors in the 1500–1600s used it at high frequencies (some over 50%), it appears to have never averaged above 10% in the general textual record.¹⁵ Its rates then fell precipitously in the late 1600s and early 1700s.

Using modern databases to help verify the results of prior research on this topic, Carmack concluded that periphrastic did “had all but vanished sometime in the 1700s.”¹⁶ By the 1820s, the usage rates, estimated to be at or below 1%, “were less than half of 1700 levels and about the same as present-day levels of use.”¹⁷ Thus, the Book of Mormon was published more than 200 years after the short-lived surge of periphrastic did in the 1500s.

The King James Bible

The Book of Mormon’s usage rates in this domain most likely weren’t derived through imitation of the King James Bible. As demonstrated in the following chart, the periphrastic did rates for each text are different in syntactic distribution and especially in overall frequency.¹⁸

The Bible doesn’t come close to the Book of Mormon’s high 20.2% overall usage rate, and its adjacency rate is approximately 20% lower (with the use of intervening subject being about 20% higher). There are also differences when it comes to individual verbs. Most notably, a significant portion of the Bible’s adjacent use of periphrastic did comes from a single verbal phrase—did eat (or didst eat)—which is used 115 times.¹⁹ In contrast, the Book of Mormon uses this phrase only once. Here are further examples of notable verbal dissimilarities:²⁰

Pseudo-biblical Texts

As another control, Carmack and Skousen compared the Book of Mormon’s periphrastic did usage with several pseudo-biblical texts from the late 1700s and early 1800s:²¹

The key indicator, of course, is that all of the pseudo-biblical texts have overall usage rates similar to that of the Bible (each with 2% or less) but far less than the Book of Mormon’s 20.2%. Nor do any of them approach the Book of Mormon’s 92.2% adjacency rate. Leacock’s text comes the closest on that front, but its already limited data is somewhat misleading due to its use of verbs that maintained higher-than-normal rates for periphrastic did.²²

The following chart may help put the Book of Mormon’s high adjacency rate into perspective.²³ It’s 1,627 instances are staggering when contrasted with the pseudo-biblical texts, none of which have more than 4 clearly viable instances.²⁴

Other 19th Century Texts

The stark results reported above are somewhat tempered by the fact that a small number of texts from the 19th century are known to have high periphrastic did/do rates.²⁵ Most notable is the Chronicles of Eri, written by Roger O’Connor and published in 1822. Its periphrastic did rate most likely exceeds that of the Book of Mormon. It is possible, however, that its unusual usage is partly due to the author’s extensive literary knowledge and Irish background (as well as the text’s Irish content).²⁶ 

Also of note is that when compared to O’Connor’s work, the Book of Mormon has noticeably lower relative rates for some verbs (did begin, did say, did see, and did speak), which better reflects Early Modern tendencies. The Book of Mormon also has a few subtypes not found in the Chronicles of Eri that were rare in Early Modern English and highly unlikely to all show up together in a single 19th century text. Thus, while Chronicles of Eri, along with a few other 19th century texts with higher rates, demonstrate that robust periphrastic did usage wasn’t an impossibility for 19th century authors, the specific usage patterns in the Book of Mormon are still uniquely archaic.²⁷

The Absence of Periphrastic Did in Joseph Smith’s Writings

Joseph Smith’s 1832 account of his personal history, much of which was written in his own hand, is a valuable resource for assessing his personal language patterns near the time of the Book of Mormon’s translation.²⁸ In his analysis of this account, Carmack found that there “is no did-periphrasis in positive declarative statements in the 1832 History, even though 88 past-tense main verbs are present. To match Book of Mormon rates there would need to be 26 instances of periphrastic did in this account.”²⁹

Ten early letters written by Joseph Smith have also been searched. They have no fewer than 44 regular past tense verbs and yet only one instance of periphrastic did. When these letters are added to Joseph Smith’s 1832 history, his early writings manifest approximately 0.6% periphrastic did usage. Although it comes from a limited sample, this usage rate is comparable to the pseudo-biblical texts and doesn’t come close to the Book of Mormon’s 20.2% rate.³⁰

Conclusion

For a text produced in 1829, the Book of Mormon’s high concentration and unique patterns of periphrastic did usage is highly unusual. With over 1700 instances spread out among more than 400 verbs, the legitimacy of this textual feature can’t be questioned.³¹ The text’s strong preference for adjacency is also noteworthy.

Could Joseph Smith have been responsible for the Book of Mormon’s periphrastic did usage? Perhaps he was one of those rare authors who picked up on this tendency through exposure to Early Modern English texts (despite their being largely inaccessible to someone in his circumstances).³² Or perhaps he noticed periphrastic did usage in the Bible and then considerably expanded its frequency, adjusted its syntactic distribution, and drastically changed its verbal tendencies. 

While not inconceivable, such scenarios seem doubtful.³³ The minimal use of periphrastic did in Joseph’s personal writings, its minimal and verbally different usage in the Bible, its minimal and syntactically different usage in a sampling of contemporary pseudo-biblical texts, and its very limited use in the broader corpus of 19th century texts all point in the other direction. Moreover, those few 19th century texts with rates comparable to the Book of Mormon, like the Chronicles of Eri, lack the Book of Mormon’s rare archaic subtypes and verbal patterns. If Joseph were responsible for the English wording of the Book of Mormon’s translation, it is more likely that its contents would reflect the standard usage of his day, or the slightly heightened but still minimal usage predominant in the pseudo-biblical literature.

The Book of Mormon’s unusually high use of periphrastic did with high adjacency is consistent with a number of other studies which argue that the text’s language largely derives from Early Modern English, rather than from Joseph Smith’s 19th century dialect.³⁴ When viewed collectively, this data supports the position that the Book of Mormon’s English translation was revealed to Joseph Smith word for word by the gift and power of God.

Royal Skousen with the collaboration of Stanford Carmack, The Nature of the Original Language, Parts 3–4 of The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, Volume 3 of The Critical Text of the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: FARMS and BYU Studies, 2018) 564–574.

Stanford Carmack, “How Joseph Smith’s Grammar Differed from Book of Mormon Grammar: Evidence from the 1832 History,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 25 (2017): 239–259.

Stanford Carmack, “The Implications of Past-Tense Syntax in the Book of Mormon,” Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 14 (2015): 119–186.