[Tagging] surface=brick -> surface=bricks?

Andrew Errington erringtona at gmail.com
Thu May 14 22:59:05 UTC 2015


On Tuesday, 12 May 2015, Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> 2015-05-12 7:05 GMT+02:00 Andrew Errington <erringtona at gmail.com
> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','erringtona at gmail.com');>>:
>
>> "Is there any good reason to avoid changing existing surface=brick to
>> surface=bricks?"
>>
>> Yes.  In English, brick can be an adjective as well as a noun.  As an
>> adjective, as it is here, it should have no "s".
>
>
>
> why do we use an adjective for bricks when we use nouns for the other
> surface values describing materials, like asphalt, gravel, ground, dirt,
> grass, concrete, paving_stones...?
>
> Cheers,
> Martin
>

It's a good question, but most likely it's due to countable and uncountable
nouns.  Bricks are countable, but your other examples (except for paving
stones) are not (therefore they can't be pluralised and we don't add an s).

Having said that, "a paving stone surface" is correct, but we would
probably say "a paved surface".  To use a plural we might say "a surface of
paving stones".

Unfortunately, English doesn't restrict itself to rigid grammar rules, so I
can't give you one for this.

Best wishes,

Andrews
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