Simple finite causative constructions
with “did cause” and subjunctive, modal should
mh1004
And I did cause that the men should till the ground
and raise all manner of grain and all manner of fruit of every kind.
mh1005
And I did cause that the women should spin and toil
and work all manner of fine linen,
mh2201
they did cause that all the people should gather themselves together;
aa5733
we did cause that our swords should come upon them.
aa6225
he did cause that his men should march forth against them,
hn0117
and did cause that they should march down to the land of Zarahemla
3n0312
but he did cause that his people should cry unto the Lord
3n0324
Now Lachoneus did cause that they should gather themselves together in the land southward
3n0326
And Gidgiddoni did cause that they should make weapons of war of every kind,
3n0417
Therefore it was Zemnarihah that did cause that this siege should take place.
3n1905
they did cause that they should be separated into twelve bodies.
3n1906
they did cause that the multitude should kneel down upon the face of the earth
er1006
he did cause that they should labor continually for their support
The auxiliary should in these excerpts is an analytical subjunctive marker in the context of command or compulsion.
In searching for this before 1830, I found one outlier in 1827, but the rest in the early modern period, between 1576 and 1662. I did not find any in the eighteenth century. So early modern usage, though quite uncommon, was more than 100 times as frequent as late modern usage. Here are the seven syntactic matches that were found:
1576,
And also it is written, that God by hys death vppon the crosse dyd cause that his sonne should haue emperiall rule,
1607,
for sometimes the peculiar or vulgar speech, or the eloquency of wordes did cause that I should do so,
a1638,
that that very image of the Beast, which the false prophet did give life unto, did cause that whosoever shall not worship the image of the Beast should be slaine;
1653,
who by his Omnipotent working did cause, that not so much as Original sin should issue into his humanity.
1659,
Not that the Holy Ghost was the father of Christ, but that the Holy Ghost did cause that a Virgin should conceive without a man:
1662,
that very Image of the Beast, which the false Prophet did give life unto, did cause that whosoever would not worship the Image of the Beast, should be slain.
1827, Google Books, 240
God . . did cause that the waters which covered the whole should fall asunder into two parts;
Two of the above are biblical paraphrases of Revelation 13:15, which has
The 1827 example is from a translation by a Church of Scotland minister of a Spanish text. The original involves a finite causative construction with the past subjunctive: “Dios . . hizo que las aguas . . se dividiesen.”
If we use
To be sure, despite a late modern example from the 1820s, English was not reverting to “did cause that . . should” usage. The translator maintained some of the syntactic features of the original Spanish as a calque [German: lehnübersetzung].
Datasets like this one tend to disprove the theory that Joseph Smith used his native expression to produce Book of Mormon English. Instead, he received a text that was mostly early modern in character. That is why his 1829 dictation ended up with an unsurpassed or nearly unsurpassed number of various archaic syntactic structures, like the thirteen excerpts shown above.
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