Distinctive stress

Some otherwise homographic, mostly disyllabic nouns and verbs of Romanic origin have a distinctive stress pattern. Thus, ' conduct n ‘behaviour’ is forestressed, whereas con'duct v ‘to lead or guide (in a formal way)’ has a stress on the second syllable. Other examples are: accent, affix, asphalt, compact (impact),¹ compound, compress (impress), conflict, contest, contract (extract), contrast, convict, digest, essay, export (import, transport), increase, insult, object (subject, project), perfume, permit, present, produce, progress, protest, rebel, record, survey, torment, transfer.² Examples of words of more than two syllables are very few:

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¹ Words of the same root are given in brackets.

² There are some meanings in which the verb is also forestressed.

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'attribute n:: a'ttribute v. Historically this is probably explained by the fact that these words were borrowed from French where the original stress was on the last syllable. Thus, ac'cent comes through French from Latin ac'centus. Verbs retained this stress all the more easily as many native disyllabic verbs were also stressed in this way: be come, be'lieve, for'bid, for'get, for'give. The native nouns, however, were forestressed, and in the process of assimilation many loan nouns came to be stressed on the first syllable.

A similar phenomenon is observed in some homographic pairs of adjectives and verbs, e.g. ‘ absent a:: ab’sent v; ‘ frequent a:: fre'quent v; ‘ perfect a:: per'fect v; ‘ abstract a:: ab’stract v. Other patterns with difference in stress are also possible, such as arithmetic [э'riθ-mэtik] n:: arithmetical) [эпθ'metik(эl)] a. The fact that in the verb the second syllable is stressed involves a phonemic change of the vowels as well: [э/ае] and [э/i].

This stress distinction is, however, neither productive nor regular. There are many denominal verbs that are forestressed and thus homonymous with the corresponding nouns. For example, both the noun and the verb comment are forestressed, and so are the following words: exile, figure, preface, quarrel, focus, process, program, triumph, rivet and others.

There is a large group of disyllabic loan words that retain the stress on the second syllable both in verbs and nouns: accord, account, advance, amount, approach, attack, attempt, concern, defeat, distress, escape, exclaim, research, etc.

A separate group is formed by compounds where the corresponding combination of words has double stress and the compound noun is forestressed so that the stress acquires a word-building force: ‘ black ‘ board:: ‘ blackboard and ‘ draw'back:: ‘ drawback.

It is worth noting that stress alone, unaccompanied by any other differentiating factor, does not seem to provide a very effective means of distinguishing words. And this is, probably, the reason why oppositions of this kind are neither regular nor productive.