Reconceptualization? Perhaps... although I prnounce it as a two-major word ("re" and "za"), with a significant minor stress on "cep". In my everyday speech (and I'm a pretty representative speaker in the US), long words get sort of compressed and all but just a couple of the most important major stresses get lowered to minor stresses. if i was to pronounce the word in a formal setting, slowly, or when reading aloud, I might indeed use all three major stresses.

http://www.univ-pau.fr/ANGLAIS/phon2/ProjetPhon2/PB/StressandAccent.html

That web site may clear things up. I notice, for example, that there's a difference between stress and intensity.

I lived in Tinton Falls when I was in middle school! So I do know what you sound like. If you're typical of the speakers in the Northern NJ area, you have a certain choppy diction and stress pattern that comes across to others (particularly here in the South) as aggressive and forceful. When I moved to Georgia, everyone could tell instantly I was from NJ.

Had to run off for lunch with the girls at work, or I would have added to my previous post that stress patterns are extremely varied between and within populations. The best we can do for an "American" pronounciation is to average things out and see what we come up with (it's closest to the pronuciation used by a representative portion of the Midwest).

I can't think what three syllables you are major stressing. I minor stress the second (tal) and major stress the fourth (tar). I do so even when the word is lengthened into "totalitarianism." Under no circumstances do I consider the first syllable (to) even a minor stress.

Examples of double stresses are "hot dog" and "groundswell." Note that they are both compounds. I'm sure there are words in English that have triple major stress, but they are probably incredibly long compounds.

If you hyphenate any given two words that each have double major stress, I suppose you technically have a word with quadruple major stress. But that's really, really pushing it.

Remember when writers used to capitalize the names of abstract concepts, like "Truth," "Faith," and "Honor?" (This was a particularly common affectation of writers who were attracted to mysticism.) Basically the words were treated as names, as proper nouns. You wouldn't say "the Chicago" or "the Tom Cruise," for example, unless you were playfully implying that Chicago and Tom Cruise have imitators.

Now, when we say someone is out of touch with reality, we mean an abstract concept that could be thought of as a name. When we mean something less abstract than the concept itself, we do indeed use the article: "He doesn't understand the reality of the situation." "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" "The honor of the Musketeer demanded that the Baron must meet him behind the inn with sabers at daybreak."

MS, in Australia you don't pronounce the initial H in hotel or hallucination, do you?

OK, it's exactly the same problem as whether you refer to "my son John" or "my son, John." In the first case you imply that you have more than one son (and this one is named John), and in the second, that you have one son (and his name is John). Here's an example from the AutoCAD drawing I'm working on at the moment

"Enlarge elastomer subassembly view B on the drawing" implies that there is more than one subassembly, but the one the reader should enlarge is a particular subassembly designated "B."

"Enlarge the elastomer subassembly, view B on the drawing" means that somewhere on the drawing there is a view (one picture) of the elastomer subassembly, and the view is differentiated from views of other subassemblies by being given the letter "B."

My two cents worth:

There are at least two forms of the word here. If you can substitute the word "nonsense" in the sentence, then don't use the article. If you can insert the words "piece of" before the word in question, then use the article "a". If neither word will quite do, it depends on context.

Compare:

"Don't tell me that, man, that is just shit/nonsense."

"Look, I really don't give a [piece of] shit, you [piece of] shit."

"I wanted to get high, so I got this guy to sell me some shit." (Drugs, American vernacular)

"That explanation is for shit." (Not sure where the "for" comes in, but you can use "nonsense" for the phrase.)

besides, Ali forgot to place the comma after "dipshit."

it's "the war against iraq," for crissakes.

OK, I happen to be a Jew and an atheist. That makes me a Jewish atheist. I'm trying this out for sound....

Seems we have the same problem with the word "Hindu." One can be a Hindu and an atheist, but to be a Hindu atheist seems silly, possibly because these days we take the word for the religion and call our friends in India "Indians." Which, in America, has its own set of problems.

In my family, we've never made such an artificial distinction between racial status as a Jew and Jewishness. If my grandmother's Bingo buddy Laverne Weinberger happens to be Jewish but eats a ham and cheese sandwich for dinner when she gets home from her son's Saturday wedding to a Buddhist, we just say she's "not religious."