My question is about compounds adjectives

I have been reading archaeological literature in english and some descriptions are constructed with several complex compound adjectives. My question is when you have for example “soft hammer flakes” does soft describes directly flakes or is bounded first to “hammer“ forming a compound adjective? In theory, it can not be a compound adjective because it lacks the hyphen but it does make sense when understood as one in because of the context.

I really hope you can help me. It drives me crazy.

Solution 1:

"Soft hammer flakes" is, in my opinion, [NP [Adj soft] [N hammer flakes]], that is, a Noun Phrase (NP) with the adjective "soft" modifying the compound noun "hammer-flakes", where "hammer" and "flakes" are both nouns. With that structure, the usual stress pattern would be 2 1 3, with primary stress on the first element of the compound "hammer". And that is how I'd say it.

Compare that with "soft squishy flakes", which has a different structure because "squishy" is an adjective rather than a noun. That has an expected stress pattern 2 3 1, with primary stress on "flakes", with structure [NP Adj Adj N]. I find that to be a good pronunciation.