syllable stress in pronunciation of frequently used expressions [closed]

Solution 1:

From what I surmise, you're basing your question on basically the following assumptions:

Unless we're emphasizing a modifier to especially differentiate the noun it modifies from another that would be differently described (e.g., I drive the 'red car, not the 'blue car.)* in order to clarify and aovid confusion, we generally put emphasis, or more emphasis, on the noun (e.g., I drive a red 'car.)* instead of on the adjective that precedes it and mofidies it.

In compound nouns, however, we generally put emphasis on the first syllable (e.g., I drive a 'Smart Car.).

*Examples follow your convention of annotating a stressed syllable with a preceding apostrophe (').

I don't disagree with those assumptions. They are generally the rule, or rules. There's another general rule that goes, "Every rule has an exception in English." It's an ironic rule since, as a rule, it too would have an exception. Anyway, my point is that there are exceptions, one being particularly salient.

Before I get into the exception, keep in mind that rules in English are descriptive rather than prescriptive, meaning rules describe how common English speakers typically speak rather than prescribe how a small set of literati or intelligentsia would have common English speakers typically speak. English rules being descriptive rather than prescriptive and nature, human and otherwise, being constantly evolving, messy, and unbending to attempts to cleanly order, delineate, define, and categorize it is why English grammar is always changing and why there are so many exceptions to rules instead of rules being hard-and-fast, like is typical of prescriptive grammar.

With that in mind, an exception to the general rule of placing emphasis on the first syllable in a compound noun arises from usage when the compound noun only became a compound noun after much use, so it started out as people seeing it and so saying it as an adjective or noun adjunct modifying a noun, so "public relations" (i.e., public re'lations) is pronounced like "media relations" (i.e., media re'lations), "friendly relations" (i.e., friendly re'lations), "public beach" (i.e., public 'beach), "public forum (i.e., public 'forum), etc.

Just because orthographers working for a dictionary publisher at some point decide that two words have been used enough together for them to now make a separate entry that puts those two words together as a compound noun (e.g., public relations) in their dictionary, that has no bearing at all on how common people typically say those words. It's not like all English speakers get together after a new dictionary has been published and say, "Oh, well, now that 'public relations' has found its way into a dictionary as a compound noun, we shall all no longer generally place more emphasis on the second syllable of 'relations' but shall now generally place emphasis on the first syllable of 'public' instead." No, tradition prevails. There's nothing nonsensical about that.

By the way, most of the examples you cited are not actually compound nouns, like "world trade," "functional programming," "objective function" are not. That isn't to say that you won't find the two words in each of those examples often used together or even possibly in a glossary together in a textbook, but if and when you do, the first word modifies the second word and is pronounced accordingly, like in computers there's programming of all kinds — functional programming, imperative programming, procedural programming, object-oriented programming, declarative programming, logic programming, mathematical programming, reactive programming, etc. — so "functional" is used as an adjective to describe one of many kinds of "programming," like how "gas," "diesel," "hybrid," "electric," etc. are each used to describe one of many kinds of "car" (e.g., The electric 'car on the right costs less than the electric 'car on the left.).