While it has long been noted that the first element of most, but not of all English nominal compounds is perceptually most prominent (e.g. TABLE cloth vs. paper CUP), a principled empirical investigation of the acoustics, perception, and the phonological distribution of these two prominence patterns has been missing. Using a corpus of spoken language, the current volume presents the first thorough and detailed investigation of these areas, while also introducing several methodological and statistical innovations to the field.