compounds and its main stress

Just like Kooyeen said, there is no easy rule for this. Moreover, stress in BrE and AE vary especially in words. What I really think is woeful is that no dictionary, to my knowledge, offers solid information about phrasal verbs and stress in those, although, normally foreign people are encouraged to use phrasal verbs.

For example,

She 'put on the 'light.
She put the 'television on.
She 'put them 'on.

Hi Jim,
I noticed this, and remembered something I read on that book, "American Accent Training". I didn't pay much attention to that part, because I then found out that there were a lot of exceptions, so many that it made no sense to consider any rules.

CalifJim wrote:

a palm-planted COURTyard  ('palm-planted' is an adjective) a glass-enclosed LOBby  (as with previous example) apricot-tinted HAIR  (as with previous example)

She says:
"An adjective and noun combination is called a descriptive phrase, and in the absence of contrast or other secondary changes, the stress will always fall naturally on the noun."
And then there's this exercise:
"There is a little girl. Her name is Goldilocks. She is in a sunny forest. She sees a small house. She knocks on the door, but no one answer. She goes inside. In the large room, there are three chairs. [...]"


Ok. So, the stress in on the noun. A red car, not a red car. Really? Hmm... All of a sudden, there it is, "review of chapters 1-6". And as an exercise, this thing comes up, "sentence balance". She says:
"Certain shifts will be dictated for the sake of sentence balance. Set phrases and contrast don't change, but the intonation of a descriptive phrase will move from the second word to the first, without changing the meaning. The stress change indicates that it's not the end of the sentence, but rather, there is more to come. [...] When we practiced Goldilocks the first time, we had very short sentences so we didn't need sentence balance. All of the descriptive phrases in blue would otherwise be stressed on the second word, if the shift weren't needed."

There is a little girl called Goldilocks. She is walking through a sunny forest and sees a small house. She knocks on the door, but no one answers. She goes inside to see what's there. There are three chairs in the large room. [...]



At that point, I thought: "What's the point in spending time on this?" I feel those kinds of stress shifts are really common, and they depend on a lot of things, not only to say "Hey, this is not the end of the sentence". Native speakers don't usually have prearranged sentences in mind when they talk. Then not everyone has the same intonation... take valley girls: would they stress the same words as everyone else?

So I decided not to focus on that, and just "go by ear". That's why I often have trouble with stress and intonation... I don't have a clue, LOL. It would be too complicated to find out and remember rules for that, and it wouldn't be worth it, I think.

Opinions? Thanks

Yeah, it would be something too complicated (and boring) to study, I think. I hope one day it'll come natural to me... Thanks