rocks and stones

[Peter A. McGraw]

Note that the mass use of both words brings out a [natural] vs. [worked]
distinction that seems to underly some of the comments so far: a "rock
wall" is something in nature that some people like to climb; a "stone wall"
is constructed of individual stones that have at least been moved and
assembled.  Similarly, a carved artifact is said to be made of stone, not
(at least in my experience) of rock.

Peter Mc.

--On Wednesday, November 19, 2003 2:34 PM -0500 Laurence Horn
<laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:

> At 2:26 PM -0500 11/19/03, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>> I cannot yield to to larry's identification of stone as the substance
>> and hence the unmarked form.I suspect a dialect difference on just
>> this matter. Several of his no-good forms (rock house, rock wall) are
>> OK by me, tough one must be careful of relatively frozen collocations
>> in such considerations. For example, I have rock walls and rock
>> fences, but I have the metaphoric verb "stonewall."
>>
>> dInIs
>>
> OK, OK.  Note also:  Rolling Stones vs. Rolling Rock, "rock music"
> but "stone soup", "Everybody must get stoned" vs. "Rock me baby all
> night long", "Leave no stone unturned" vs. "What rock did you crawl
> out from under?"
>
> More research is required.
>
> L



*****************************************************************
Peter A. McGraw       Linfield College        McMinnville, Oregon
******************* pmcgraw at linfield.edu ************************