David Taylor_ Compound Words Stress

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Compound word stress

David Taylor

Stress in English compound words poses difficult problems for foreignlearners. English does not seem to be at all consistent in the way it treatscompounds, either from the point of view of writing or from the point ofview of pronunciation and especially stress. If we look at how this uncer-tainty and inconsistency arises we can perhaps understand better the diffi-culties. And if we look beyond the principles of word stress to the principlesof accent placement, and in so doing pay attention to the information struc-ture of compounds, we can obtain valuable guidance about stress place-ment in these words.

A difficulty It is notoriously difficult to know how to stress English compound words.This is partly because we cannot easily define what a compound word is,and partly because it is not simply a question of stress but also of accent.The latter involves a significant combination of both stress and tone andserves to highlight what is regarded as ‘new’ or important information in a

particular group of words or tone group. If we look beyond the principlesof stress to the principles of accent as well, we are in a better position totry and explain the stress of compound words in English.

What is a We shall look at accent in a little more detail later, but first let us deal withcompound? the question of what compound words are. In one sense, it is easy to

define a compound word. It is simply a word which itself consists of two ormore independent words. But this begs the question, ‘How do we knowwhen we are dealing with two or more independent words and when weare dealing with a compound?’ We cannot always be sure. Our confusionon this point is reflected in the way we write and pronounce so-calledcompound words. Sometimes we write two words as one and pronouncethem as one, for example: ‘doorstep, ‘earthquake, ‘hai rbrush. Sometimeswe write two words separately but pronounce them as if they were one,for example, ‘bus conductor, ‘engine driver, ‘dining room. At other times,we write two words together as if they were one but pronounce them as ifthey were two separate words. Examples are ‘loud’speaker, ‘hard’work-ing, ‘home’made. We also find words written separately and pronouncedseparately, with two stresses, but which from the lexical and semanticpoint of view, are clearly regarded as one word, for example:‘prime ‘minister, ‘red ‘herri ng, ‘town ‘hall. Sometimes we use ahyphen when writing so-called compound words: ‘old-‘fashioned, ‘heart-shaped, ‘make-believe. Occasionally, we find words written in several dif-ferent ways; sometimes with a hyphen, sometimes without, sometimes

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as one word, sometimes as two, for example, ‘no one or ‘no-one, ‘teapotor ‘tea-pot, ‘trademark or ‘trade mark. We even find words written in allthree possible ways, for example: ‘egg cup, ‘eggcup, or ‘egg-cup.

Pronunciation As we can see, the variability in writing is reflected to some extent in pro-nunciation, in that some compound words have a single stress whileothers have so-called double stress, not to mention more elaborate com-pounds which may have several stresses. This variability both in writingand in pronunciation is the cause of severe problems for the learner or forthe non-native speaker generally. The spelling, as we have seen, is of verylittle help. First, it cannot always indicate whether or not we are dealingwith a compound. In the case of two-word compounds where each word iswritten separately, there is no way of telling whether these form a com-pound or are simply two words that happen to occur together. As Roach(1983: 83) says:

There is no clear dividing line between two-word compounds and pairsof words that simply happen to occur together quite frequently.

Second, even if it is clear that a compound is involved, there is no indica-tion of how it should be stressed. It is not surprising that wrong stressingof compounds is one of the commonest errors, even among those whootherwise approach a native-speaker standard of pronunciation. The fol-lowing are some common examples that I have frequently heard from mystudents and others. The normal native-speaker pronunciation is given inparentheses.

‘fountain ‘pen (‘fountain pen) ‘hose’pipe (‘hosepipe)‘fault ‘finding (‘faultfinding) ‘grand’mother (‘grandmother)‘make-‘believe (‘make-believe) ‘English ‘teacher (‘English teacher)

As far as this last example is concerned, both stress patterns are possible,but there is a difference in meaning. ‘English ‘teacher means a teacherwho is English, while ‘English teacher means a teacher of English, whomay or may not be English. To go back to previous examples, I find thatmy students, when asked to mark stress, almost invariably put ‘buscon’ductor (for ‘bus conductor), ‘engine ‘driver (for ‘engine driver), and‘dining ‘room (for ‘dining room).

One way of explaining the apparent variability in the way we pronounceand write compound words is to look at them as part of a process of wordformation in English. Historically, what seems to happen is that when acompound is first used it is felt still to consist of two separate words. Later,as it becomes more firmly incorporated in the language, it comes to beregarded as one word. Several intermediate stages may be passedthrough, where the status of the compound is ambiguous. Furthermore,this process may take place at different speeds as far as speech and writingare concerned. This would explain some of the examples above, which

seem to behave differently in speech and writing.We can say, then, that many compound words seem to occupy an uneasyintermediate status between single words and phrases or groups of words.

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From the point of view of stress, there seems to be an interaction betweenthe principles of lexical stress, that is stress as a lexical property of thesingle word, and the principles of accent, which apply to phrases andgroups of words. To put it a little differently, we could say that compoundword stress provides us with a case of lexical stress, that is, stress as aproperty of a word, whose place in the word is decided on the basis of theprinciples of accent placement. If it is true, as we have suggested, thatcompound words occupy an intermediate position between single wordsand phrases, then it is not surprising that they should be affected by prin-ciples that apply to single words and also by principles that apply tophrases.

‘Double’ stress and This recognition that accent is involved may help us in deciding how to‘single’ stress stress compounds. But before exploring this possibility, let us first look at

another principle which has been proposed to explain stress placement incompounds. Consider the following examples:

‘steel con’tainer (cf. ‘steel container)‘plastic ‘bag (cf. ‘plastic factory)‘metal ‘box (cf. ‘metal company)‘fish ‘pie (cf. ‘fish shop)

In these examples, there seems to be a difference in the relationshipbetween the two elements making up the compound, and this results in adifferent stress pattern, so that, for instance when steel container means

‘container made of steel’, it has double stress (‘steel con’tainer); but whenit means ‘container for keeping steel’ it has single stress (‘steelcontainer).We also have examples like the following:

‘woman ‘doctor (cf. ‘woman hater)‘player ‘manager (cf. ‘player power)‘child ‘actor (cf. ‘child minder)

Here also there seems to be a different relationship between the two ele-ments of the compound, so that we get double stress when the two ele-ments refer to different aspects of the same person, and single stress in

other cases (a woman doctor is both a woman and a doctor, but a womanhater is presumably not normally a woman). Further similar examplesare:

‘family ‘size (cf. ‘family size)‘city ‘wall (cf. ‘city people)

where in the double-stressed examples there seems to be an ‘of or ‘geni-tive’ relationship, as can be seen in the following contrasting sentences:

Poverty seems to be related to family size (‘family ‘size).When buying washing powder I always buy the family size (‘familysize).

In the first case, we are talking about the size of a family, and in the secondcase, about the size for a family.

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70

Grammar as a We seem, then, to be dealing in some way with the grammatical relation-clue ship between the elements making up the compound. Different writers

treat this in different ways. The relationship is sometimes looked at insyntactic terms and sometimes more in semantic terms. Consequently,the descriptions of these relationships and the implications for stressdrawn from them can be very complicated, as the following quotationsshow:

Double stress is used:

1. In compounds of two nouns if the first indicates the material ofwhich the second is made.

2. In compounds consisting of two nouns each indicating a differentcharacteristic of the same person or animal.

3. In many compounds where the relationship between the two ele-

ments is one of belonging such as might, in a sense, have beenexpressed by a genitive. (Christophersen, 1956: 165-6)

It will be seen that when the first component names a material or anarticle that can be used in manufacture, the compound is double-stressed if it names something made out of or containing the first com-ponent; otherwise it is single stressed. . . .

It will also be noticed that in most other cases of double stress the firstcomponent is fully attributive to the second, stating what kind of a

thing of its class it is; for this reason the second component takes thekinetic stress. In cases of single stress, on the other hand, the first com-ponent (which takes the kinetic stress) is felt to be more substantiveand less attributive; it has greater importance in the compound.

(Kingdon, 1958: 150)

These observations are undoubtedly correct, as far as they go, and con-tain important insights. Indeed, Christophersen’s three points and King-don’s first point are fairly clearly illustrated by the examples given above.In addition, Kingdon, whom I have quoted extensively for this very pur-pose, makes two significant points on which we can build to provideguide-lines for stressing compounds. The problem is that, in this par-ticular form, these statements are extremely obscure and of very littlepractical pedagogical help for either the learner or the teacher. As far aspurely syntactic statements are concerned, the best remains that ofRoach:

(i) If the first part of the compound is (in a broad sense) adjectival, thestress goes on the second element, with a secondary stress on thefirst. For example:

‘loud’speaker‘bad-‘tempered‘second-‘class‘three-’wheeler

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(ii) If, however, the first element is (in a broad sense) a noun, the stressgoes on the first element. For example:

‘typewriter‘car-ferry‘sunrise‘suitcase‘tea-cup

(Roach, 1983: 83-4)

Roach is fairly cautious about these ‘rules’, but stated in this way they aregenuinely helpful to teachers and learners alike.

Accent It was mentioned above that the idea of accent was crucially involved incompound stress. In any tone group, there is one stressed syllable whichstands out by virtue of having the only moving tone. This syllable is some-times called the nucleus, and corresponds to the tonic syllable commonlyreferred to, particularly in discussions of sentence stress. However, aswas noted at the beginning, this combination of significant stress and toneis conveniently referred to as accent. The accent draws our attention towhat the speaker wishes to highlight or place in the foreground or simplyto what the speaker assumes to be new information as far as the listener isconcerned.

This idea of accent is, in fact, present in Kingdon, as his ‘kinetic stress’corresponds to the term accent. Similarly, Roach’s ‘primary stress’ alsocorresponds here to accent. The important thing is to recognize whataccent does. As we have just seen, accent marks the important element inan utterance, indicating the ‘information focus’, whether this consists of‘new’ information or information which for some reason is foregrounded.Kingdon implicitly recognizes this in the quotation above, when he talksabout one component having ‘more importance in the compound’. Infact, it seems that we can avoid the obscure details of the syntactic andsemantic relations between the elements of compounds and simply con-centrate on the principles of accent. If we think in terms of which elementis more important or is relatively more important, then we have a reason-ably straightforward guide to help us decide how to stress compounds inEnglish in cases of doubt.

Accent, then, has to do with information, and the important or relativelymore important element is the one which is more informative. An ele-ment may be more informative because it contains more specific infor-mation than the other element or elements, as for example in ‘sittingroom or ‘bus driver, where the general term is de-accented in favour ofthe particular term. It may be that one of the terms is more common orfamiliar, and hence more predictable, thus conveying less information.This would explain why we get ‘Park Street, as opposed to ‘Park ‘Avenue,‘Park ‘Road, or ‘Park ‘P lace. Street is the more common and predictableterm in these cases, and is thus de-accented as opposed to the less com-

mon terms such as place, square, terrace, grove, lane, avenue, and manyothers which are all accented. In other cases, one element may have lesssemantic content than another. For example, matter in the expression‘reading mutter has relatively little precise meaning and so is de-accented.

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Fusion The relative informativeness, predictability, or familiarity of the elementsof a compound can therefore act as a useful guide to stress. It is not, how-ever, a completely reliable guide, as there are many puzzling apparentexceptions to the principle. Why, for instance, do we say ‘apple ‘pie, but‘apple cake? Is cake similar to street, being more predictable and familiarthan pie? Perhaps, but apple pie would seem to be more common thanapple cake. The probable reason for these puzzling cases is the fact,already referred to, that many compounds seem to be in transitionbetween compound word status and single word status. Bolinger (1986:121) talks about ‘the degree of fusion’. The more fusion there is in theeyes of speakers, the more likely it is that a compound will behave phono-logically like a single word and have a single stress. Different compoundsmay well acquire different degrees of fusion over time. Indeed, if we lookat pronunciations recorded in dictionaries and other works over the yearswe can see this happening. It is interesting to note, for instance, that manycompounds marked by Kingdon (1958) as having ‘double stress’ nownormally have single stress. For example, Kingdon marks the followingwords, among others, with double stress. For most speakers they prob-ably now have single stress, as given in brackets:

‘farm’house (‘farmhouse)‘box ‘office (‘box offi ce)‘sea ‘level (‘sea level)‘tissue ‘paper (‘ti ssue paper)‘boa con’strictor (‘boa

constrictor)‘vacuum ‘cleaner (‘vacuumcleaner)

‘cold’cream (‘coldcream)‘six’shooter (‘sixshooter)‘sleeping ‘partner (‘sleeping

partner)

‘flying ‘fish (‘flying fish)‘small’holder (‘smallholder)‘public ‘school (‘public school)‘traveller’s 'cheque (‘traveller’s

cheque)

‘stage ‘manager (‘stage manager)’ week'end (‘weekend)‘warrant ‘officer (‘warrant officer)‘sugar ‘beet (‘sugar beet)‘maiden ‘name (‘maiden name)

In these examples, the accent has moved from the second element to thefirst. Presumably, as these compounds have become more familiar theyhave acquired a greater degree of fusion and thus behave more like single

phonological words.

Some pedagogical If we now think back to our original examples of common errors in theimplications stressing of compound words, we can perhaps begin to see the peda-

gogical implications of what has been said. The examples are repeatedhere for ease of reference:

‘fountain ‘pen (‘fountain pen) ‘hose’pipe (‘hosepipe)‘fault ‘finding (‘fault finding) ‘grand’mother (‘grandmother)‘make-‘believe (‘make-believe) ‘English ‘teacher (‘English‘bus con’ductor (‘bus conductor) teacher)‘dining ‘room (‘dining room) ‘engine ‘driver (‘engine driver)

What seems to be happening is that sometimes speakers seem to have

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some difficulty in recognizing a compound in the first place. One couldsay that they are treating the compounds as two separate words andstressing them accordingly. In this they are perhaps often led (or misled)by the spelling, but not always (see make-believe, hosepipe, and grand-mother). This may be a factor, but it cannot be the complete explanation,

as speakers are clearly aware of the unitary status of the words from thesemantic point of view, as is evident in the way they use the words. Amore basic problem is that there is apparently a lack of understanding ofthe relationship between the two parts of the compound. Or rather, to bemore accurate, the faulty stressing of the compound does not make clearwhat the relationship is between the two parts. As we saw above, it is thefunction of accent to mark the relationship of different parts of the utter-ance to one another. In terms of their relative informativeness, impor-tance, predictability, and familiarity. We can conclude, therefore, thatpaying more attention to the principles of accent placement could lead to

fewer difficulties with the stressing of compound words. One can imaginesessions, for example, where the contrasts between such pairs as the fol-lowing are explored:

a ‘dancing teacher a ‘danci ng ‘teachera ‘young ‘French teacher a ‘young ‘French ‘teacheran ‘English student an ‘English ‘studentan ‘English teacher an ‘English ‘teacher

Work of this nature, looking at the different relationships of the elementsof compounds to one another, as marked by different placings of the

accent, perhaps by getting learners to identify which elements carry the‘new’ information or are the most informative, should increase learners’awareness of and sensitivity to this phenomenon, and should lead to agreater ability to predict the correct stressing of compound words.

To sum all this up very briefly, we can say that, in cases of doubt, if we lookat which element of a compound carries most information, or is the mostunpredictable, and place the accent on that element, we have a goodchance of producing correct compound stress.

Received March 1990

ReferencesBolinger, D. W. 1986. Intonation and its parts.

London: Edward Arnold.Christophersen, P. 1956. An English Phonetics.

London: Longman.Kingdon, R. 1958. The Groundwork of English

Intonation. London: Longman.Roach, P. 1983. English phoneti cs and phonology.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The authorDavid Taylor has taught for many years in the Over-seas Education Unit at Leeds University, where he isconcerned with teacher-education courses forEnglish teachers. He has had many overseas visitsand has been involved in consultancies, runningcourses, workshops, and seminars on behalf of theUniversity, The British Council, and the OverseasDevelopment Administration, in most parts ofAfrica and also parts of South East Asia and EastAsia, as well as Europe and the Middle East. He has

published on aspects of English pronunciation andphonology, on teacher-education for languageteachers, and on communicative competence and itsrelation to language teaching.

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