Re: Question about a grammatical term

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).

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?