Stress Interchange

In many cases we have stress interchange in different parts of speech in modern English.

Nouns and verbs differing by the position of the stress are of Romanic origin, they came into English from or through French. In this case the nouns have a stress on the first syllable and the verbs on the second syllable, e.g.: 'accent – to ac'cent, 'conduct – to con'duct.

This principle is observed in English very strictly (although not always, e.g. 'comment n – to 'comment v) and is explained in the following way: French verbs and nouns with the same root had a different structure at the time they were borrowed into English. That is during the Middle English period nouns had two syllables in their structure and verbs had three syllables. When these words were assimilated in English the stress in them was shifted from the last syllable, which is typical of French, to the last but one syllable, which was typical of Middle English. Fixed stress existed in English then. In the nouns where there were two syllables, the stress was on the first syllable and in the verbs where there were three syllables the stress was on the middle syllable. Later on the final syllable in verbs was dropped as it happened to native verbs as well when there was levelling of endings, and the stress in verbs remained on the last syllable (the former middle syllable).

As a result we can find many pairs of verbs and nouns of Romanic origin differing by the position of their stress.

As a result of stress interchange we have vowel interchange as well because English vowels in stressed and unstressed positions are pronounced in a different way, e.g.:

'present – to pre'sent.

Stress distinction is, however, neither productive nor regular.

Reduplication

Reduplication in most cases is combined with sound interchange. Reduplication is often combined with alliteration and rhyme and also with sound imitation. In most cases words formed by reduplication belong to the colloquial style (only a few of such words belong to the neutral style, e.g. 'murmur', 'ping-pong').

When reduplication is used without sound interchange we have cases of perfect (v complete) reduplication. In most cases reduplication is partial.

Reduplication is not productive. It is used mainly in speaking with small children and especially in children's stories.

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