[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - (Ground)

[Matthew Woehlke]

On 10/07/2020 11.25, Paul Allen wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Jul 2020 at 15:41, Matthew Woehlke wrote:
>> On 10/07/2020 09.32, Paul Allen wrote:
>>> On Fri, 10 Jul 2020 at 14:10, Mateusz Konieczny wrote:
>>>> barren is horrible as it can be easily interpreted as including also
>>>> paved surfaces,
>>>
>>> Ummm, not really.  Not in British English.  I'd never describe paved
>>> surfaces as barren.  Technically, I suppose they are, but they don't
>>> fit my mental category of barren.
>>
>> As someone who desperately wishes his gravel driveway *was* barren, I'm
>> afraid I'm inclined to agree with Mateusz Konieczny :-).
> 
> How about the roof of your house?  Unless there's moss growing on it,
> is it barren?  The road your house is on, is that barren?

My earthen roof might be barren, yes :-). (Okay, *I* don't have such a 
roof, but some people do!)

> The car park in town, is that barren?
If it's well maintained, hopefully it is. If it's crumbling, it might 
not be! My previous residence had a paved driveway that, strictly 
speaking, was not barren.

It's true that such surfaces are often *implied* to be barren, and we 
may not think of typically labeling them as such, but strictly speaking, 
"barrenness" is a property that they *can*, and *don't necessarily* possess.

I think the real reason we don't typically think of roads as "barren" is 
because we think of them as existing at a different level, if that makes 
any sense. We don't think of a field with a large rock in it as "an area 
of bare rock surrounded by meadow", we think of it as "meadow, with a 
[large] rock in it". Roads and rivers are similar. By contrast, I 
*could* easily see describing a sufficient expanse of paved ground as 
"barren".

-- 
Matthew