rocks and stones

[Peter A. McGraw]

Sounds good to me, too, because the carvings are carved into natural rock
which has not been extracted, shaped, etc.  In other words, to me the
phrase below refers to carvings made into or on "rock," not "a rock."

Peter Mc.

--On Wednesday, November 19, 2003 4:38 PM -0500 "Dennis R. Preston"
<preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU> wrote:

>> Hmmmmm. "These ancient rock carvings..." Sounds good to me.
>
> dInIs
>
>> 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 ************************



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