What follows is a brief overview of phases we can expect to see in the development of the Nephite Hebrew linguistic tradition.
Population size significantly shapes language evolution. Larger populations tend to gain more words but simplify grammar, while smaller, isolated groups often experience faster word loss and develop more complex, irregular structures due to drift and closer social learning. Larger groups foster innovation and widespread adoption, while smaller groups are vulnerable to random linguistic changes and founder effects, leading to unique, complex features.
Hence, Nephite liguistic traditions should be expected to have a had a significant founder effect, simplifying the vocabulary, while making the grammar more complex.
Contact with the Mulekites, and then, shortly, integration of Anti-Nephi-Lehies can be expected to have introduced new words into Nephite society, led to grammar simplification, and further have modified the ideas associated with existing words. I would propose that this contact would have marked a significant transition in the language into what I would propose calling, Middle Nephite.
Between the breakup of Nephite society into tribes, and the consolidation of disparate peoples into one enormous population, we can expect a lot of linguistic changes to have affected the Nephite language. Grammar can be expected to have simplified overall, and increased word adoption can be expected.
One goal I have been pursuing in order understand the Nephite language is to investigate wordplay. My hypothesis has been that if I become familiar with the forms of Nephite wordplay from the recognizable examples, I could then develop an expectation as to where to find wordplay that is less obvious because it involves deviations in Nephite Hebrew from the Biblical Hebrew we are more familiar with.
I am partly inspired by investigations into how numbers are used in the Book of Mormon, suggesting that all usage of numbers reinforced themes consistent with their context. Similar to this, for most Book of Mormon writers, I believe they were very careful about their general word usage and even their name usage. The use of names and keywords was very carefully engineered to reinforce poetic and thematic story elements, and to teach gospel principles. We frequently see names avoided, until a late moment when they just happen to to a poetic structure, or avoided altogether. In the Book of Ether, for example, many prominent characters are never named, and it is my feeling that these foreign, and sometimes complex, names, often didn't lend themselves to the Nepite and Hebrew style of storytelling. They may have conveyed mixed ideas, thematically incongruent ideas, or may not have conveyed any meaningful ideas from a Hebrew perspective.
Some of the patterns I have noticed, I will describe below. Not all wordplay, of course, conforms to these patterns.
In the Bible, one extremely common place to find wordplay, is when a character's birth is described. In the Book of Mormon, we don't see that happen much. We aren't told when any of the Alma's are born. Moroni's birth is not announced to us. The Book of Mormon, as a rule, generally only names a character when they are significant to the history, and that history would seem to be getting written in a somewhat contemporary fashion. (Probably after the events, but not multiple decades after the events.) Hence, they do not know that any particular baby is significant, generally, until they have grown up, and done something significant. (The Book of Ether is an exception to the rule, failing to name even some of the book's most significant characters.)
So, instead of engaging in wordplay at a character's birth, we will frequently see wordplay engaged in immediately at a character's introduction. The author's self-introductions are some of the easiest places to look, but even minor character introductions often have this feature. It is my observation that Nephi's introduction is a template which many future authors followed.
I Nephi, having been born of goodly parents
We find a very similar example in Enos.
I, Enos, knowing my father that he was a just man
Alma's introduction isn't a self-introduction, but it follows a very similar pattern nonetheless.
But there was one among them whose name was Alma, he also being a descendant of Nephi. And he was a young man
I have highlighted the wordplay in these examples, but there's another feature here too. All of these introductions say something about the character's genealogical background. Alma's example is particularly striking because the fact that he is a Nephite is so glaringly obvious, given the context of the story, that, for a while I wondered why they would bother to waste space in the book mentioning it. If there's a chiasm there that it's needed for, I certainly can't see it. I also supposed that maybe the note was intended to highlight for the reader, which linguistic tradition his name relates to, so that subsequent wordplay would be more identifiable. (eg. Ammon, we are told, was a descendant of Zarahemla, hence, maybe Ammon is to be read as being from the Mulekite dialect) I don't think either of those are the main point. I think, in the Book of Mosiah, we can see that the more general template is to name the character, say something about their genealogical background, and associate a meaning with the name via a pun. (Note: I am not saying that this template is always followed perfectly, but it seems to be strong enough that they mentioned Alma's background as a Nephite, even though it was obvious.)
When a poetic structure can be identified, it can do a lot to suggest the meaning of a name that was otherwise unknown. Names with known meanings can also be useful for identifying poetic structures that weren't otherwise known. It appears that while hunting for chiasms has been a popular activity, familiarity with the meanings of names in the Book of Mormon, in combination with chiasm awareness, is not very common.
In studying a few chiasms I have identified, an interesting feature has become apparent that I have not really fully documented, but it appears that in Nephite poetic style, multiple themes can be present and multiple poetic structures can exist and overlap. At some point in the future, I hope to give poetic structures more attention, and I will document what I mean. I personally believe that Nephi's chiasms in 1 Nephi 3-5 set an example of this, which other authors have followed. (Though I'm inclined to believe that it would be hard to outdo 1 Nephi 3-5.) The overlapping structures make them a little difficult to document as you can read through, and see a chiasm one way, but then notice competing patterns which can't be easily detangled from the first pattern one saw, to document them distinctly. I have considered creating multiple views of a text to highlight the differing thematic views of the text.
Anyhow, chiasms certainly exist, and wordplay based on names can be an important structural element which can shed light on the meaning of names, and knowing the meaning of names can shed light on the existence of chiasms.
To learn more about this, I would recommend reading my notes on Mosiah 25:12-13, where I perceive 3 overlapping structures.
See also: Chiasms
Some characters have names that directly relate to their own roles in a story, or signal a theme in the story. Alma's name, at it's core, suggests a hidden potential to emerge, and that's what he is, rather consistently, in the Book of Mosiah. His son, of the same name, demonstrates the same quality. Gideon is "the hewer", or, by extension, "the destroyer". When he is introduced, he is trying to hew down the wicked King Noah, and while he doesn't succeed, his introduction does mark the beginning of the end of Noah's kingdom. While Gideon goes on to become a great asset to his people, we find, in the end, that his death is described in a way that is consistent with his name, being smitten repeatedly with a sword. Zeezrom and Antionah have names that play on the concept of money, and they both represent the love of money.
This would seem to be the most difficult pattern to identify without already knowing something about the names involved, but it can certainly be helpful in reinforcing a hypothesis suggested by other data.
Name lists appear frequently in the Book of Mormon, usually in sets of 3 names. When we see a name list, we should expect that the names in the list, and the order, has meaning. The names could construct a straightforward sentence, or the names may relate to each other in a meaningful way. A good biblical example is Ezekiel 14:14. (See notes on the verse.)
I will not claim that the meaning of all of these will be straightforward to understand. The Nephites had their own flavor of Hebrew, and wordplay bears out that some Middle Nephite name meanings seem to depart from what we would expect from based on our understanding of Biblical Hebrew. In fact, it seems that even our understanding of some Early Nephite names cannot be fully developed based on an understanding of Biblical Hebrew. The Lehites came from a subculture of Jerusalem that incorporated a linguistic tradition that was not entirely compatible with the dominant culture of Jerusalem. We now that they incorporated and were trained in a dialect of Egyptian. Evidence suggests that Lehi's training had familiarized him with some Akkadian and Sumerian, at least insofar as it related to borrowed words and cultural practices.
Here are some examples from the Book of Mormon:
| Citation | List |
|---|---|
| 1 Nephi 8:14 | Sariah, and Sam, and Nephi |
| 2 Nephi 1:28 | Laman, Lemuel Sam, and the sons of Ishmael |
| Mosiah 7:6 | Amaleki, Helem, and Hem |
| Mosiah 24:1 | land of Shemlon, and in the land of Shilom, and in the land of Amulon |
| Mosiah 27:34 | Ammon, and Aaron, and Omner, and Himni |
| Alma 2:22 | Zeram, and Amnor, and Manti, and Limher |
| Alma 16:5 | (Maybe Zoram?,) Lehi, and Aha |
| Alma 18:38 | Laman, Lemuel, and the sons of Ishmael |
| Alma 20:2 | Aaron, Muloki, and Ammah |
| Alma 21:2 | the Lamanites and the Amalekites and the people of Amulon |
| Alma 22:35 | Ammon, Aaron, Omner, and Himni |
| Alma 24:1 | Amalekites, Amulonites, and the Lamanites land of Amulon, land of Helam, and land of Jerusalem |