Prosody and Syntax in English

While reading John Well's Phonetics Blog (which all self-respecting language people should subscribe to) I found a discussion on the atypical pronunciation of the phrase "E equals M C squared."  It is interesting on its own, but it also got me thinking.

What if we used mathematical expressions (or more accurately: the way we SAY mathematical expressions) to investigate the way English tone and stress is used to group elements in a sentence?  The numbers could be seen as nouns and the operations a verb.

For example, when I say [1 + 2 + 3] I don't detect any unusual emphasis ("One plus two plus three'), but if I wanted to express [(1 + 2) + 3] I feel like I would stress the second operation sign ("One plus two PLUS three") with a quicker, falling tone on the (1 + 2).  And if it were grouped a different way [1 + (2 + 3)] emphasis on the 2 sounds more natural ("One plus TWO plus three").

Unfortunately, my ear for tones is horrendous.  Just ask any of the cooks at the Chinese restaurant I work at.  So, if I were to do this for real, I would want to record a bunch of people dictating equations to someone else.  There would have to be some rules for the people reading the equations, such as not being able to add words that represent the actual symbols (i.e. "One plus, in parentheses, two plus three").  Then, if the message was successfully conveyed, run it through a program like Praat or Wavesurfer to measure the tonal contours and see if any patterns emerge.

Of course, then would come the more difficult task of seeing if these patterns are also used is regular sentences.  As in, "Jim and Mary went to the park (together)" [(Jim + Mary) went to the park] as opposed to "Jim and Mary went to the park (separately)" [Jim went to the park + Mary went to the park].

Any phoneticians out there?  What do you think?