Query: Verb vs. Noun Syllable Stress (Modified by Grant Barrett)

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Apr 14, 2004, at 2:19 PM, Grant Barrett wrote:

> This is a message from someone who visited the ADS web site. Please
> respond to the original sender as well as to the list.
>
> ...
>
> I am an ESL teacher, and one of my students has posed a question which
> has stumped me.  Can you help?  I have taught the class that words
> like "convict, export, subject, record, etc." have the stress on the
> first syllable when a noun and on the second syllable when a verb.
> What about the words "outline" and "purchase" where the stress is
> always on the first syllable or "police" and "cement," where it's
> always on the second?  How does this work?
> Sue M. Featro
> smf at tri-valley.k12.pa.us

i'm away from my references, but i know that this particular stress
alternation is applicable only for verbs/nouns with the latinate
prefixes con-, re-, ex-, sub-, per-, etc. (and is not always applicable
even there).

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)