Tag Archives: David Marsh

Chomsky, Upsy Daisy and pip-pip onk-onk

Just starting to enjoy my Christmas present copy of David Marsh’s ‘For Who the Bell Tolls’…

“My one-year-old son’s favourite TV programme, the surreally brilliant In the Night Garden, features a hero who communicates only in squeaks; the others can only say their own names apart from Upsy Daisy, who can also say ‘daisy doo’ and ‘pip-pip onk-onk’. (Chomsky would call this ‘poverty of the input’.)

For who the bell tolls

Excellent point well referenced in a review by Steven Poole in last weekend’s Guardian Review section, of the new book of that name by that organ’s ‘production editor and style guru’, David Marsh:

“…and the correct use of ‘whom’, avoidance of which has given this book its deliberately teeth-grating title. Cleverly, Marsh here inverts the usual reasons for understanding conventions. You need to know the rule for ‘whom’ not because you should use ‘whom’ whenever appropriate (because it will sometimes sound pompous), but because you need absolutely to avoid using ‘whom’ when it should actually be ‘who’, since that will sound both pompous and stupid.”

Spot on! Well done that man.