ADS-L Digest - 25 Sep 2014 to 26 Sep 2014 (#2014-97)

[Amy West]

Yep, I was going to point to German where there isn't this strong 
distinction in the "floor"/"ground" cognates, but was waiting for  Chris 
to do so.

And, of course, back in the days of Old English, in a typical house, 
very often the floor was in fact ground (what we now call a "dirt 
floor"). But, I have not gone back into the dictionaries or corpus to 
look into any kind of split in that period.

Good on Eric pointing out the outdoors "floor" use.

---Amy West

On 9/27/14, 12:00 AM, ADS-L automatic digest system wrote:
> Date:    Fri, 26 Sep 2014 08:08:55 -0800
> From:    Chris Waigl<chris at LASCRIBE.NET>
> Subject: Re: floor 'ground'
>
> This happens to be a tough word pair for me, one of a small number where my otherwise relatively good (for a non-native speaker) intuition of English isn’t functioning reliably. It is harder to pin down than others where my native language doesn’t make a distinction that is present in English. I have been corrected by my (American/Canadian) spouse. Maybe because it’s not completely observed by native speakers either, and I wonder if there is even a rough consensus about whether to say “it fell on the floor” or “… ground” in edge cases:
>
> - What if it is an outdoors stage, dais or porch?
> - What if it is an indoors workshop with a dirt floor (ha!) or gravel?
>
> Furthermore, it seems right to say that “ground” is more general than “floor” in utterings where both cases are included (“If your smartphone falls to the ground its screen may crack.”) though in practice speakers may circumnavigate the problem (“If your smartphone is dropped its screen may crack.”)
>
> Chris

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org