Birth of a nova--not?

[Mark A. Mandel]

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> scripsit:

>>>>>
Alice quoth:
>As for the pronunciation difficulties, it's the stress pattern. The
>similarities with VERitable lead me to VERisimilitude, which has too
>many unstressed syllables in sequence. The alternative, verisiMIlitude
>suffers from a similar problem.
>
Well, given the usual rules, you'll end up with secondary stress on
the first syllable to go with the primary on the antepenult, which
seems just right:  vèrisimílitude--a classical double dactyl, as in
"microbiology" or "audiovisual" or "Afro-American" or
"nymphomanical".  In fact if you've composed or read any
double-dactyls (those "higgledy-piggledy" poems of the form invented,
or perfected, by Anthony Hecht and Yale's own John Hollander, you've
encountered one per poem in the third line of the second stanza.  Cf.
e.g.
	[...]
<<<<<

That is exactly how I've always pronounced it.

m a m