Interesting, but I think that it's unlikely someone would say that an ordinary wooden pencil was smashed, short of some more catastrophic action. A pencil migh

Interesting, but I think that it's unlikely someone would say that an ordinary wooden pencil was smashed, short of some more catastrophic action. A pencil might have broken, but not smashed. "We fired the pencil at a brick wall and it smashed" ... okay, it's probably the pencil that smashed. Perhaps a mechanical pencil, but again, that seems odd and unlikely. All of this requires a whole lot of knowledge about the world: - Pencils are generally made from wood, wood is a material that's more likely to deform or break rather than shatter - Tables can have tops that are made from materials that are more likely to shatter than deform/absorb the shock.