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how to know it's time to stop writing for the day
We have seen, as I mentioned a day (or so?) ago, that my supervisor took one look at the sentence There must be some other factor determining whether a sequence of two nouns is a compound or a phrase; conversely, if stress is a reliable indicator of anything, it must be of something else, underlined the second clause, and wrote, 'That sentence should be taken outside & shot.'
In brief, the traditional wisdom is that in a sequence of two nouns, if the first noun is stressed the sequence is a compound and if the second noun is stressed the sequence is a phrase. I'm setting out to show how the traditional wisdom is not actually so wise. To that end, I have a huge list of two-noun sequences that have been marked by someone other than myself for left or right stress. There are a few hundred words that take stress whether they appear first or second in the sequence, and one might conclude that these words are particularly stress-attracting (supervisor's comment: 'Right.'); but two-thirds of these also appear in unstressed positions, so wtf? Maybe the words they combine with when they're unstressed are more stress-attracting -- fine, but sometimes these two-thirds of a couple hundred words combine with each other. The word 'campaign', for instance, shows up in all four available positions (left side of left-stressed, left side of right-stressed, right side of left-stressed, right side of right-stressed), and so does the word 'education'. So in 'education campaign', which one 'wins'? It's like M&M battles. This is all the background you should need for the following observation:
Something makes me suspect that if I were to hand in a draft with the sentence Is it possible to arrange the words on either side of the various compounds on some sort of sliding scale of stress-gravity?, my supervisor would have not just the sentence but also me taken outside and shot.
Word count, by the way: 6180, of NTE 25000, but I haven't even really begun talking about what I did yet. Also, about 23,000 words worth of appendices, and counting, if it turns out to be a good idea to -- you know -- include some data.
Also: weight regained while at the Worlds has been relost. It took 48 hours, meaning, water water water. Now I'm back where I was before I left. Huzzah.
In brief, the traditional wisdom is that in a sequence of two nouns, if the first noun is stressed the sequence is a compound and if the second noun is stressed the sequence is a phrase. I'm setting out to show how the traditional wisdom is not actually so wise. To that end, I have a huge list of two-noun sequences that have been marked by someone other than myself for left or right stress. There are a few hundred words that take stress whether they appear first or second in the sequence, and one might conclude that these words are particularly stress-attracting (supervisor's comment: 'Right.'); but two-thirds of these also appear in unstressed positions, so wtf? Maybe the words they combine with when they're unstressed are more stress-attracting -- fine, but sometimes these two-thirds of a couple hundred words combine with each other. The word 'campaign', for instance, shows up in all four available positions (left side of left-stressed, left side of right-stressed, right side of left-stressed, right side of right-stressed), and so does the word 'education'. So in 'education campaign', which one 'wins'? It's like M&M battles. This is all the background you should need for the following observation:
Something makes me suspect that if I were to hand in a draft with the sentence Is it possible to arrange the words on either side of the various compounds on some sort of sliding scale of stress-gravity?, my supervisor would have not just the sentence but also me taken outside and shot.
Word count, by the way: 6180, of NTE 25000, but I haven't even really begun talking about what I did yet. Also, about 23,000 words worth of appendices, and counting, if it turns out to be a good idea to -- you know -- include some data.
Also: weight regained while at the Worlds has been relost. It took 48 hours, meaning, water water water. Now I'm back where I was before I left. Huzzah.