kæt1d ago

Do the rules for sculptures being statues (eg for animals and deities) match those of whether the creature has a proper name? Or does it need a human or human-like figure present?

For example, "a horse sculpture" vs "a statue of Dobbin, hero of Aliwal"?

Show threadAdam1d ago
@chiffchaff I think that sounds like a good heuristic. I'm not sure that it's 100%; but I can't think of a good counterexample offhand. I guess context is a thing; if you have twenty sculptures in a row, one of which is a depiction of Pegasus and the others of which are random horses. it would be hard to call that one a statue and its neighbour a sculpture.
Show threadAdam1d ago
@chiffchaff I'm now wondering if sculpture:statue :: picture:portrait.
Show threadAdam1d ago

@chiffchaff I'm fairly sure in some situations, esp religious ones that I'd be more prone to use sculpture/picture

Seems i'm not alone:

Show threadkæt1d ago
@pseudomonas That's a good (and curious) point.
Show threadAdam1d ago

@chiffchaff https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sculpture+of+a+dog%2Cstatue+of+a+dog&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3 this surprised me

(ETA: with "of a bird" they're roughly identical)

Google Books Ngram Viewer

Google Ngrams: sculpture of a dog, statue of a dog, 1800-2022

Show threadAdam1d ago
@chiffchaff in fact, while "sculpture" and "statue" are roughly as common as each other; "statue of" outnumbers "sculpture of" by a huge margin. I guess a statue _has_ to be *of*, whereas sculpture can be abstract? ("abstract statue" << "abstract sculpture")
Show threadAdam1d ago
@chiffchaff huh. "statue of a" >> "sculpture of a"; but "statue of two" ≈ "sculpture of two".
Show threadkæt
@pseudomonas A statue must be a kind of body rather than a kind of creation. like the difference between a character and a scene in a book?
Mar 23 at 2:11pmWeb
Show threadAdam22h ago
@chiffchaff Seems so. "statue of a house" has zero occurrences ("sculpture" has very few but not zero); same pattern with "apple". "statue of a tree" has more hits than I'd expect but still a minority.