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Friday, July 3, 2009

Performance Tip #18

If the other players won't budge, try "bowing chocolates" --one expensive, gourmet chocolate to whomever agrees with your bowing.

5 comments:

Bisceglia Family said...

Do I get one for agreeing even though I don't play a bowed instrument? :D
~ Janna

David said...

I really doubt it --unless you could convince the bowed musicians. But that seems like an easily manipulable system.

Nathan Straub said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Nathan Straub said...

Your sentence should be changed to: "one... chocolate to whoever agrees with your bowing." _Whoever_ is the subject of the embedded noun clause "x agrees with your bowing."

The M in _whomever_ would serve to mark the dative case (give chocolate to whomever) or the accusative case (give whomever to chocolate). Here, however, _whoever_ is not the indirect object of the main clause "try... [giving] chocolate to x." It is rather, as I said before, the subject of the embedded noun clause, since that whole clause "x agrees with your bowing" is the indirect object.

Now one can see what a summer of syntax and morphology class can do to one. I do approve of the leadership technique, though. If all section members brought gourmet chocolates to vouch for their bowing styles, this world would be a better place.

j said...

*falls about laughing* Poor Dave, you just can't win.