more on badasses

[Laurence Horn]

>Let's help out here for real.
>
>"Badass" is a compound - two words blended into one. If that's true, it
>should have the English compound stress rule, not the adjective plus noun
>rule.
>
>For example a BLUEgill (stress on first syllable) is a compund and means a
>kind of fish. A fish with a blue GILL (stress on second element) is an
>adjective plus noun combination, and there are plenthy of fish with blue
>gills which are not bluegills. "Badass," as any native spaker who has the
>item can tell you, has the unmarked stress pattern "BADass" (not "bad
>ASS"), hence, I would be tempted to call "badass" a compound.
>
>Note how this does our list-partner's love affair a lot of good. A compound
>is a single word made up of two. Love triumphs after all.
>
>dInIs (happy to play cupid)
>
>PS: Please note also that "badass" is made up of the fixed adjective form
>"bad" which means cool, hip, imposing, powerful, etc...., not the item
>"bad" which means unseemly, evil, not good. The form coumpounded here, for
>example, does not inflect. "He is one bad sumbitch." but not *"Yeah and his
>brother is one worse sumbitch." Hence, no "worseass" or "worstass."
>
In fact, the "bad" incorporated into this compound does inflect, but as a
regular adjective:  "Yeah, and his brother is even baaaader".   (Nice
evidence for homonymy as opposed to polysemy.)  But I also think we have to
be careful to warn our partner not to count too heavily on the compound
stress as a fail-safe diagnostic, although it helps here.  Even if
first-element stress is an unerring guide to the presence of a compound,
it's only a sufficient and not a necessary condition.  Without getting into
adj+noun compounds, such noun+noun sequences as "atom bomb", "apple pie",
and for some speakers "chicken soup" are stressed on the (non-initial)
head, and yet by all other criteria are compounds. Other examples:  "class
reunion", "child prodigy", "shotgun wedding".

 Here's a partial bibliography, culled from a fairly recent exchange on
Linguist List on this topic:

        Bauer, L. (1983). Stress in compounds: a rejoinder. English
Studies, 64(1), 47-53.
        Bolinger, D. (1972). Accent is predictable (if you're a mind
reader).  Language, 48, 633-644.
        Chomsky, N., & Halle, M. (1968). The sound pattern of
English. New York: Harper and Row.
        Cinque, G. (1993). A null theory of phrase and compound
stress. Linguistic Inquiry, 24, 239-297.
        Farnetani, E., Torsello, C., & Cosi, P. (1988). English
compound versus non-compound noun phrases in discourse. Language and
Speech, 31(2), 157-180.
        Lees, R. (1963). The grammar of English
nominalization. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
        Levi, J. (1978). The syntax and semantics of complex
nominals. New York: Academic Press.
        Liberman, M., & Sproat, R. (1992). The stress and structure of
modified noun phrases in English. In I. Sag & A. Szabolcsi (Eds.),
Lexical Matters (pp. 131-182). Stanford, CA: Center for Study of
Language and Information.
        Marchand, H. (1969). Categories and types of present-day
English word-formation (2). Muenchen: C.H. Beck'sche
Verlagsbuchhandlung.
        Marchand, H. (1974). On the analysis of substantive compounds
and suffixal derivatives not containing a verbal element. In
D. Kastovsky (Ed.), Studies in syntax and word-formation
(pp. 292-322). Muenchen: Wilhelm Fink.
        Pennanen, E. (1989). On the function and behavior of stress in
English noun compounds. English Studies, 61, 252-263.
        Sampson, R. (1980). Stress in English N+N phrases: a further
complicating factor. English Studies, 61, 264-270.
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