English Dictionary

… Phonological competence is also reflected in intuitions about phonological structure: any English speaker intuitively feels, for example, that the sequence 'black bird' can either be a single phonological word (BLACKbird, with primary stress on black = a species of bird, like thrush, robin, etc.), or two independent phonological words (BLACK BIRD or black BIRD = bird which is black, as opposed to 'white bird', 'yellow bird', etc.).