Re: Question about a grammatical term

--- David Peterson <DigitalScream@...> wrote:
> Christophe wrote:
>
> <<Also,
> both words are still pronounced as if they were
> independent, but that's true
> of
> German compound words too,>>
>
>      I hate to rain on everyone's agreement parade,
> but this is just not true
> (not true for English, I mean).   The words are NOT
> pronounced as if they
> were independent, and this is easy to see.   Take
> the words:
>
> cooler
> court
> heater
> beater
>
> Put them in a sentence, like:   "That's my x."
> With each one of these
> words, you'll notice that there's a stress on the
> first syllable (for
> "court", a stress on the word).   Now put those in
> compounds:
>
> water cooler
> basketball court
> water heater
> egg beater
>
> And try again: "That's my WAter cooler"; "That's my
> BASketball court";
> "That's my WAter heater"; "That's my EGG beater".
> (I could do this in
> SAMPA, but this is clear enough, I hope.   Caps =
> stress.)
I tend to get "WAter COOler"; "BASketball COURT"; etc.
The stresses aren't _equal_ in force; but both
elements are stressed. I probably divide the spectrum
of stress in an unconventional way, with levels of
half stress beyond the simple stressed/unstressed
dichotomy.

Sentential stress - the natural stress patterns of
whole utterances - tend to override the one word one
stress thing you've got going:

THAT'S my WAter HEAter you're TRASHin there PAL.

If I were to say these words carefully and in
isolation, I might be more likely to eliminate, or at
least severely reduce, the stress of the second
element [thus, WAterheater].

> Note that the
> first nouns in the compounds are pronounced as
> usual, but the second nouns
> all lose all their stress--that is, the whole word
> becomes unstressed.   You
> don't say: "That's my WAter HEAter".   That would
> show right away that you
> weren't a native speaker of English.
Or that your dialect does things different from mine!

> For an example of a compound noun that does work
> this way, why not "a BRICK
> BUILding"
For me, that's not a compound; it's a simple adj +
noun, though it is indeed stressed in the manner you
suggest.

> -David
Padraic.


=====
raps il tenós mathin la ngouerma;
     mays comez le nces il luchets le secund.

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