The English compound stress myth

Abstract

This study investigates the distribution of end-stress and fore-stress among English NN and NNN compounds. It finds that end-stress in NNs is not ‘exceptional’, as many researchers have claimed, but confined to a reasonably well defined class of attribute-head NNs within which it is (at least optionally) grammatical and often predictable. In NNNs – NNs with embedded NNs – both fore-stress and end-stress can occur in both the embedding and the embedded NN, giving rise to eight possible stress patterns, all of which are attested. Moreover, the distribution of fore-stress and end-stress in embedding and embedded NNs follows the regularities identified in free-standing NNs. There is therefore no reason to accept the generalization whereby in NNNs, the second element is always stressed under right-branching and the first element under left-branching. While such patterns are perhaps particularly frequent, all others are also grammatical: the Compound Stress Rule known in the literature for some fifty years, deriving stress patterns from structural geometry, is wrong.

Prominence in Triconstituent Compounds: Pitch Contours and Linguistic Theory

“…In addition to that, Berg also provides information about a number of right-branching compounds with prominence on constituent N1 and N3, as well as left-branching compounds with prominence on N3. Similar counter-examples are also provided in a more recent approach by Giegerich (2009). His study investigates the traditional English Compound Stress Rule, and, in contrast to Kvam and Berg, explicitly argues against the LCPR and its predictions.…”

“…Giegerich (2009) Kösling and Plag (2009) find violations of the LCPR in their speech corpus data that suggest an effect of embedded prominence, and these authors state that these patterns merit 'further empirical testing with more carefully controlled data' (p. 229). The present study provides such data and strong empirical support for the idea that embedded prominence, and not branching, determines the prominence of triconstituent noun compounds.…”

From Noun to Evaluative Adjective: Conversion or Debonding? DutchTopand Its Equivalents in German

“…The question whether English sequences such as key point in 4a should be analyzed as compounds or phrases has long been an object of much debate (see, for instance, Plag et al 2008, Giegerich 2009 and, more generally, Schlücker & Hüning 2009 on the distinction between compounds and phrases) 2 . It can at least be stated that their cohesion is much weaker than that of Dutch and German compounds.…”

Compounding

“…Generally, most scholars agree that apple pie is a compound but exceptional in some way. However, there is less agreement about an array of noun‐noun constructions in English which have final (phrasal) stress (see Giegerich for a thorough discussion of the possible stress patterns). Examples are found in (5) below, taken from Jackson and Punske ():…”