Stressing English compounds correctly.

We describe a program for assigning correct stress contours to compounds and other modifier-head structures in English. It makes use of two kinds of knowledge: idiosyncratic knowledge about the stress behavior of various modifier-head types and general knowledge about English stress rules. As an example of the first, place names such as Madison AVENUE generally have rightward stress, but the word street induces left-hand stress: MADISON street. Semantic relations between the component words are also important: we know that if the left-hand member is a grammatical object of the right-hand member, stress is leftward (DOG catcher.) Our program makes use of such idiosyncratic knowledge in determining stress by deducing the type of modifier- head construction and the likely relations between the members.