Re: Question about a grammatical term

On Thu, 3 Oct 2002 12:35:44 -0400, Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:

>Jeff Jones wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Jeff Jones <jeffsjones@...>
>To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU <CONLANG@...>
>Date: Wednesday, October 02, 2002 8:17 PM
>Subject: Re: Question about a grammatical term
>
>
>>On Wed, 2 Oct 2002 19:54:03 -0400, Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote:
>>>    There seems to be a dialect split in the US regarding "chicken soup"
>>(and other flavors, though chicken is most widespread)--  CHICKen soup
>>(lotsa folks) vs. CHICKen SOUP (me and others)>>
>>
>>Well I must say that never in my life have I heard an L1 English speaker
>>eliminate _all_ stress from the 2nd word. It always takes on secondary
>>stress. >
>
>You are probably correct there.  I was merely following the same
>transcription system as in David's post. The NYC stress pattern is most
>likely 13 on "chicken" with 2 on "soup" (Noun-Noun compound), whereas my
>idio-/dialect prefers I think 23 on chicken, 1 on soup (Noun=Adj-Noun
>phrase).
Perhaps I misunderstand David's system.

>Consider also "yellow-jacket" (wasp, 13 23) vs. "yellow jacket" (garment,
>23 l3)
>
>Lord knows, English stress is complicated.  I have always been in awe of
>Chomsky-Halle's "Main Stress Rule", which does seem to work, even though it
>takes up the better part of a page in their book--  but considering all the
>ramifications and conditions it has, one has to wonder if they've really
>captured any generalizations.
>
>>I have even heard compounds where the 2nd word had primary stress
>>and the 1st secondary stress (again, L1 English speakers, but not
>>Southerners in this case).
>
>I can't offhand come up with such forms. I can't quite imagine "water
>cooler" or "road rage" with main stress on "cooler, rage"....Are you sure
>it's not cases of true NN compounds vs. N/Adj-N phases (as in my chicken
>soup example)? Could you cite some examples?
All that I can think of right now are food examples, like potato salad. I
don't understand the difference between the 2 types. In both cases, both
words are nouns. Wait -- how about spittin' image? I've never heard heavy
stress on the first word (even by Southerners!), despite that it's a set
phrase.

Jeff

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