On 3/3/06, Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote:
> Julia "Schnecki" Simon skrev:
>
> > Then again, I also remember my confusion when I first saw words like
> > _apple_ in _apple pie_ analyzed as adjectives in a text on English
> > grammar...
Such analysis is common when diagramming sentences; there is a strong
pressure to give each lexical word a distinct grammatical role.
> > To my German brain, this _apple_ isn't an adjective at all;
> > it's very obviously another noun, which forms a compound noun with the
> > second noun, and they're written as two separate words because of some
> > idiosyncrasy of English spelling.
I'd say, rather, that they're written as two separate words because
English doesn't share the idiosyncrasies of German spelling. :)
> I once read an Anglophone phonetician pointing out
> the difference in intonation between the compound _orange juice_ meaning
> "juice made of oranges" and the adjective + noun phrase _orange juice_
> meaning "any juice of orange color": the compound has stress only on
> _orange_ while the phrase has stress on both _orange_ and _juice_.
> By that criterion _apple pie_ is a compound!
? Not the way I say it; "apple pie" has equal stress on both words.
When I say it with the stress only on "apple", the result sounds like
someone speaking with a marked foreign accent.
--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>