Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T21:14:18.121Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Blackbirds and blue whales: stress in English A+N constructions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2020

LAURIE BAUER Open the ORCID record for LAURIE BAUER [Opens in a new window]
LAURIE BAUER*
Affiliation:
Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington 6140, New Zealand [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article various constructions of English with the form A + N are considered, with particular reference to stress patterns. It is shown that there are several such patterns, and that stress patterns do not correlate with fixed effects. It is also argued that a simple division between compound and phrase does not seem to provide a motivation for the patterns found. The patterns seem to be determined partly by factors which are known to influence stress patterns in N + N constructions, and partly by lexical class, though variability in which expression belongs to which class is acknowledged. It is concluded that this is an area of English grammar that needs further research.

Keywords

compoundadjectiveEnglishstress
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 25 , Special Issue 3: Spoken language in time and across time , September 2021 , pp. 581 - 600
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

I should like to thank my colleagues who agreed to take part in the pilot test mentioned in section 5, and the anonymous referees for ELL.

References

Adams, Valerie. 1973. An introduction to modern English word-formation. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Arndt-Lappe, Sabine. 2011. Towards an exemplar-based model of stress in English noun–noun compounds. Journal of Linguistics 47(3), 549–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bally, Charles. 1950. Linguistique générale et linguistique française, 3rd edn. Berne: Francke.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 1978. The grammar of nominal compounding. Odense: Odense University Press.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 1983. Stress in compounds: a rejoinder. English Studies 64, 47–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 1998. When is a sequence of two nouns a compound in English? English Language and Linguistics 2, 65–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 2004. Adjectives, compounds and words. Nordic Journal of English Studies 3(1) (= Worlds of words: A tribute to Arne Zettersten), 7–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 2010. The typology of exocentric compounding. In Scalise, Sergio & Vogel, Irene (eds.), Cross-disciplinary issues in compounding, 167–75. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 2015. Stressing about the news. Paper presented to the meeting of the New Zealand Linguistic Society.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 2016. Re-evaluating exocentricity in word-formation. In Siddiqi, Daniel & Harley, Heidi (eds.), Morphological metatheory, 461–77. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 2017. Compounds and compounding. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 2019. Compounds and multi-word expressions in English. In Schlücker, Barbara (ed.), Complex lexical units, 55–68. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter Mouton.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie, Lieber, Rochelle & Plag, Ingo. 2013. The Oxford reference guide to English morphology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, Laurie & Tarasova, Elizaveta. 2013. The meaning link in nominal compounds. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics 10(2), 1–18.Google Scholar
Bell, Melanie. 2011. At the boundary of morphology and syntax: Noun noun constructions in English. In Galani, Alexandra, Hicks, Glynn & Tsoulos, George (eds.), Morphology and its interfaces, 137–68. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, Melanie & Plag, Ingo. 2012. Informativeness is a determinant of compound stress in English. Journal of Linguistics 48, 485–520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard. 1935. Language. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Brookes, Ian (ed.). 2003. The Chambers dictionary, 9th edition. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam & Halle, Morris. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Collins, Beverley & Mees, Inger M.. 2013. Practical phonetics and phonology, 3rd edn. London and New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cutler, Anne. 2012. Native listening. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2004. The British National Corpus. Available at www.english-corpora.org/bnc/Google Scholar
Davies, Mark. 2018. iWeb: The 14 Billion Word Web Corpus. Available at www.english-corpora.org/iweb/Google Scholar
Deuter, Margaret, Bradbery, Jennifer & Turnbull, Joanna (eds.). 2015. Oxford advanced learner's dictionary of current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Giegerich, Heinz J. 2005. Associative adjectives in English and the lexicon–syntax interface. Journal of Linguistics 41, 571–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giegerich, Heinz J. 2015. Lexical structures: Compounding and the modules of grammar. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hogg, Richard & McCully, C. B.. 1987. Metrical phonology: A coursebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Daniel (ed.). 2003. Cambridge English pronouncing dictionary, 16th edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kenyon, John S. & Knott, Thomas A. (eds.). 1953. A pronouncing dictionary of American English. Springfield, MA: Merriam.Google Scholar
Koshiishi, Tetsuya. 2011. Collateral adjective and related issues. Berne: Peter Lang.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kunter, Gero. 2011. Compound stress in English: The phonetics and phonology of prosodic prominence. Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levi, Judith. 1978. The syntax and semantics of complex nominals. New York: Academic.Google Scholar
Mayor, Michael (ed.). 2009. Longman dictionary of contemporary English, new (5th) edn. Harlow: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Moon, Rosamund. 2015. Multi-word items. In Taylor, John R. (ed.), The Oxford handbook of the word, 120–40. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
OED. 2019. The Oxford English Dictionary online. www.oed.comGoogle Scholar
Payne, John & Huddleston, Rodney. 2002. Nouns and noun phrases. In Huddleston, Rodney & Pullum, Geoffrey K. et al. , The Cambridge grammar of the English language, 323–523. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pennanen, Esko V. 1980. On the function and behaviour of stress in English noun compounds. English Studies 61, 252–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plag, Ingo. 2006. The variability of compound stress in English: Structural, semantic, and analogical factors. English Language and Linguistics 10, 143–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plag, Ingo. 2010. Compound stress assignment by analogy: The constituent family bias. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 29(2), 243–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plag, Ingo, Kunter, Gero & Lappe, Sabine. 2007. Testing hypotheses about compound stress assignment in English: A corpus-based investigation. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 3(2), 199–233.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plag, Ingo, Kunter, Gero, Lappe, Sabine & Braun, Maria. 2008. The role of semantics, argument structure, and lexicalization in compound stress assignment in English. Language 84(4), 760–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spencer, Andrew. 2003. Does English have productive compounding? In Booij, Geert E., DeCesaris, Janet, Ralli, Angela & Scalise, Sergio (eds.), Topics in morphology: Selected papers from the third Mediterranean morphology meeting (Barcelona, September 20–22, 2001), 329–41. Barcelona: Institut Universitari de Lingüística Applicada, Universtitat Pompeu Fabra.Google Scholar
Upton, Clive, Kretzschmar, William A. Jr & Konopka, Rafal (eds.). 2001. The Oxford dictionary of pronunciation for current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wells, J. C. 2008. Longman pronunciation dictionary, 3rd edn. Harlow: Pearson Education.Google Scholar
Ziemann, Benjamin. 2003. Germany after the First World War: A violent society? Results and implications of recent research on Weimar Germany. Journal of Modern European History / Zeitschrift für moderne europäische Geschichte / Revue d'histoire européenne contemporaine 1(1), 80–95.Google Scholar