Talk:pavement

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pavement

rfd-sense: "The material with which a surface is paved." The citation suggests they were throwing pavement, that is sense #1. To me, it would be like for porridge having a sense "the materials from which porridge is made" with a citation that backs up the primary sense. Mglovesfun (talk) 23:10, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

If you interpret chunk here as sense 1 ("A part of something that has been separated."), then it goes your way, but as sense 2 ("A representative of a substance at large, often large and irregular.") it would require a separate sense. However, I'm not finding any pavement in Google Books that really justifies the second sense, however much my gut initially liked it.--Prosfilaes 10:36, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I did find a citation that might work, in referring to picking up pavement, instead of chunks or pieces, but it's slightly ungrammatical (and definitely inelegant) any way you cut it. I added it to the sense. (I do think that's the difference between pavement and porridge here; a scoop of porridge is still porridge, but a scoop of pavement is not a footpath.)--Prosfilaes 10:59, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

In the US, I think research will confirm that pavement is mostly uncountable and refers to both paved surfaces and any material used to pave them or the result of breaking up a paved surface. COCA had no spoken or news use of the plural of pavement. The only plural use there was in fiction, almost exclusively books. I wonder whether the plural use is mostly by UK-born writers. I think that paving would prove more common for the material-used sense, however.

Judging from Google news results for plurals, countable use of pavement is much more common (even absolutely) in the UK. MWOnline, Encarta, WNW, RHU, and AHD all have the "material" sense. The UK-based OneLook dictionaries seem to miss this, even when claiming to cover US English (eg, Cambridge American).

One can find at least three varieties of usage of uncountable "pavement" in the US, exemplified by collocations such as "miles of p.", "chunks of p.", and "tons of p.", in order of my estimate of frequency of the varieties. I think the "material" sense needs to clearly indicate the "result of breaking up a paved surface" sense as it seems much more common that the raw-material sense. The "setting" of the cementitious elements of paving or of asphalt seem to be enough of a transformation to make these seem somewhat distinct. DCDuring TALK 12:24, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not overwhelmingly convinced, but I don't mind being outvoted. Especially if it means the entry gets improved during the discussion. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:55, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Couldn't we have 'the materials from which X is made' for a lot of nouns, then? What about building, house, wall. "[P]rotesters hurled Molotov cocktails and chunks of pavement" seems to justify "A paved footpath at the side of a road." and "it is possible to pick up pavement " seems to justify "Paved exterior surface, as with a road or sidewalk.". The reason I didn't tag it with RFV as I'm confident that it is attestable, just that such attestations will also support one of the other three definitions we already have. Mglovesfun (talk) 16:33, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I think we can use those three in the "chunks of (ruined) building/house/wall", but not for the "materials used to make". But I don't think that these are very frequently used as mass nouns. Almost any normally countable noun any be rendered uncountable by preceding it with "much", "little", "tons of", "acres of". But "pavement", at least in the US, is commonly uncountable. DCDuring TALK 19:16, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

See Google Books: "chunk of bridge". Mglovesfun (talk) 12:47, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

{{look}}

• Delete. Any object that can be broken into chunks or pieces could be described as having this sense. Chunks of door, chunks of desk, chunks of picture tube. bd2412 T 03:23, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

deleted -- Liliana • 19:49, 24 October 2011 (UTC)