1-2-1 versus 2-1-2

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

This has been driving me crazy, but I think I've finally figured it out,
thanks to Preston and Troike.

Dennis is right (below) about 1-2-1 stress versus 2-1-2 for monosyllabic
words; the former does indeed unambiguously indicate ((Adj+Noun) Noun)). It
now seems to me, though, that 1-2-1 is contrastive, selected only as a way of
disambiguating a potentially ambiguous string. Otherwise, one selects the
default pattern 2-1-2, which is also the pattern for the unmarked parsing
((Adj) Noun + Noun). This is why one gets, e.g., "dead END kids" meaning
"dead-end kids": nobody thinks that "dead+end+kids" is ambiguous because
everybody knows that "dead-end" is a compound (and "end kids" seems like an
unlikely combination, though I guess it would be possible to think of the
'dead kids on the end'). Similarly, people who, like Dennis, don't think of
"big-hair" as a sort of compound (and who would puzzle over what a "hair day"
might be) would use the default stress pattern. People like me (who didn't
think of "big+hair" as a compound) would assume that, since the contrastive
stress pattern was not being used, the parsing must be the unmarked "big
hair-day" (on the common pattern of "birthday," "Sunday," "holiday,"
"Groundhog Day," etc.)

How would one indicate unambiguously "big hair-day" if one needed to do so?
or "dead end-kid"? Troike's reminder about juncture is helpful here, I think:
at least in my speech, I can signal this by lengthening the vowel of the
first word ("biiiig hair-day," "deeeaaad end-kid") or perhaps by an
exceptionally lengthy pause ("bigguh hair day," "deaduh end-kid").


In a message dated 1/26/2000 3:13:58 PM, preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU writes:

<< Ron is right and wrong.

Let's stick with his 1=primary stress, 2=secondary, etc...

Most ((Adj+Noun) Noun) combos are 1-2-1 "big-dog show" = show of big dogs.
Most (Adj(Noun+Noun)) combos are 2-1-2 "big dog-show" = big show of dogs.

My stress marks are only relative; if you find some "3" rather than "2,"
that's not important. (I also know that neither is typically hypenated; I'm
just doing that to make sure my parsing is well-understood.)

Here's the problem. I believe that "bad hair day" is like the first
("bad-hair day"), but I pronounce it (and have nearly always heard it
pronounced) like the latter.

Wuzzup?

dInIs
 >>