Initial-stress derivation is a phonological

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

 process in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, wherein stress

Stress (linguistics)

In linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain syllables in a word, or to certain words in a phrase or sentence. The term is also used for similar patterns of phonetic prominence inside syllables. The word accent is sometimes also used with this sense.The stress placed...

 is moved to the first syllable

Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...

 of any of several dozen verb

Verb

A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...

s when they become noun

Noun

In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...

s or adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

s. This is called a suprafix

Suprafix

In linguistics, a suprafix is a type of affix where a suprasegmental change modifies an existing morpheme's meaning. In many languages, they are used to differentiate between otherwise identical lexemes, but in some they are used derivationally or inflectionally.An example in English is the...

 in linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

. It is gradually becoming more standardized in some English dialects, but is not present in all, and the list of affected words differs from area to area, and whether a word is used metaphorically or not. At least 170 verb-noun (or adjective) pairs exist. Some examples are:

• conflict.

as a verb, "I hope that won't conflíct in any way."

as a noun, "There will be no cónflict."

• record.

as a verb, "Remember to recórd the show!".

as a noun, "I'll keep a récord of that request."

• permit.

as a verb, "I won't permít that."

as a noun, "We already got a pérmit."

Origins

In English, since the early modern period

Early Modern English

Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English...

, polysyllabic nouns tend to have an unstressed final syllable, while verbs do not. Thus, the stress difference between nouns and verbs applies generally in English, not just to otherwise-identical noun-verb pairs. The frequency of such pairs in English is a result of the productivity

Productivity (linguistics)

In linguistics, productivity is the degree to which native speakers use a particular grammatical process, especially in word formation. Since use to produce novel structures is the clearest proof of usage of a grammatical process, the evidence most often appealed to as establishing productivity is...

 of class conversion

Conversion (linguistics)

In linguistics, conversion, also called zero derivation, is a kind of word formation; specifically, it is the creation of a word from an existing word without any change in form...

.

When "re-" is prefixed to a monosyllabic word, and the word gains currency both as a noun and as a verb, it usually fits into this pattern, although, as the following list makes clear, most words fitting this pattern do not match that description.

Many of these have first syllables that evolved from Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 prepositions, although again that does not account for all of them. See also list of Latin words with English derivatives.

When the stress is moved, the pronunciation, especially of vowels, often changes in other ways as well. Most common is the reduction of a vowel sound to a schwa

Schwa

In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa can mean the following:*An unstressed and toneless neutral vowel sound in some languages, often but not necessarily a mid-central vowel...

 when it becomes unstressed.

List

absent -
abstract -
accent -
addict -
address -
affect -
affix -
alloy -
ally -
annex -
assay -
attribute -
augment -
belay -
bombard -
combat -
combine -
commune -
compact -
complex -
compost -
compound -
compress -
concert -
conduct -
confect -
confine(s) -
conflict -
conscript -
conserve -
consist -
console -
consort -
construct -
consult -
content -
contest -
contract -
contrast -
converse -
convert -
convict -
costume -
decrease -
default -
defect -
desert -
detail -
dictate -
digest -
discard -
discharge -
discount -
discourse -
dismount -
document -
escort -
essay -
excise -
exploit -
export -
extract -
finance -
foretaste -
foretoken -
forward -
frequent -
gallant -
impact -
implant -
implement -
impound -
import -
impress -
imprint -
incense -
incline -
increase -
indent -
inlay -
insert -
insult -
intercept -
interchange -
intercross -
interdict -
interlink -
interlock -
intern -
interplay -
interspace -
interweave -
intrigue -
invert -
invite -
involute -
mandate -
misprint -
object -
offset -
ornament -
overcount -
overlap -
overlay -
overlook -
override -
overrun -
overturn -
perfect -
perfume -
permit -
pervert -
prefix -
present -
proceed(s) -
produce -
progress -
project -
protest -
purport -
rebel -
recall -
recap -
recess -
recoil -
record -
re-count -
redirect -
redo -
redress -
refill -
refund -
refuse -
regress -
rehash -
reject -
relapse -
relay -
remake -
repeat -
reprint -
research -
reserve -
reset -
retake -
retard -
retract -
retread -
rewrite -
segment -
subject -
survey -
suspect -
torment -
transfer -
transform -
transplant -
transect -
transport -
transpose -
traverse -
undercount -
underlay -
underline -
underscore -
update -
upgrade -
uplift -
upset

Comments

Some two-word phrases follow this pattern. Nouns derived from phrasal verb

Phrasal verb

A phrasal verb is a combination of a verb and a preposition, a verb and an adverb, or a verb with both an adverb and a preposition, any of which are part of the syntax of the sentence, and so are a complete semantic unit. Sentences may contain direct and indirect objects in addition to the phrasal...

s like the following are written solid or hyphen

Hyphen

The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...

ated: hand out, drop out, hand over, crack down, follow through.

In some cases the spelling changes when the accent moves to another syllable, as in the following verb/noun pairs:

• envelop, envelope
• unite, unit

In British English

British English

British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...

, annexe is the noun from the verb annex.

Pronunciations vary geographically. Some words here may belong on this list according to pronunciations prevailing in some regions, but not according to those in others. Some speakers, for example, would consider display as one of these words. For some other speakers, however, address carries stress on the final syllable in both the noun and the verb. There is a dialect

Dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...

 in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 referred to informally by linguists as P/U or police/umbrella because many nouns are stressed on the first syllable; including police, umbrella, and many verb-derived nouns. Some dialects of Scottish English have this in "police".

Some derived nouns are used only in restricted senses; often there is a more generic noun not identical in spelling to the verb. For instance, to combine is to put together, whereas a combine may be a farm machine

Combine harvester

The combine harvester, or simply combine, is a machine that harvests grain crops. The name derives from the fact that it combines three separate operations, reaping, threshing, and winnowing, into a single process. Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn ,...

 or a railway car

Combine car

A combine car in North American parlance, most often referred to simply as a combine, is a type of railroad car which combines sections for both passengers and freight....

; the generic noun is combination. Perhaps transpose is used as a noun only by mathematicians; the transpose

Transpose

In linear algebra, the transpose of a matrix A is another matrix AT created by any one of the following equivalent actions:...

of a matrix is the result of the process of transposition of the matrix; the two-syllable noun and the four-syllable noun differ in meaning in that one is the result and the other is the process. Similar remarks apply to transform; the process is transformation, the result of the process is the transform, as in Laplace transform, Fourier transform

Fourier transform

In mathematics, Fourier analysis is a subject area which grew from the study of Fourier series. The subject began with the study of the way general functions may be represented by sums of simpler trigonometric functions...

, etc.

In the case of the word protest, as a noun it has the stress on the first syllable, but as a verb its meaning depends on stress: with the stress on the second syllable it means to raise a protest; on the first it means to participate in a protest. This appears to result from the derived noun being verbed.

Entrance is also a noun when stressed on the first syllable and a verb when on the second, but that is not a true example since the words are unrelated homograph

Homograph

A homograph is a word or a group of words that share the same written form but have different meanings. When spoken, the meanings may be distinguished by different pronunciations, in which case the words are also heteronyms. Words with the same writing and pronunciation A homograph (from the ,...

s.

See also

• Weak form and strong form
  Weak form and strong form
  In the phonology of stress-timed languages, the weak form of a word is a form that may be used when the word has no stress, and which is phonemically distinct from the strong form, used when the word is stressed. The strong form serves as the citation form or the isolation form when a word is...
  
  
• Suprafix
  Suprafix
  In linguistics, a suprafix is a type of affix where a suprasegmental change modifies an existing morpheme's meaning. In many languages, they are used to differentiate between otherwise identical lexemes, but in some they are used derivationally or inflectionally.An example in English is the...
  
  
• List of English homographs

External links

• November 1, 2007 strip of Dinosaur Comics
  Dinosaur Comics
  Dinosaur Comics is a constrained webcomic by Canadian writer Ryan North. It is also known as "Qwantz", after the site's domain name, "qwantz.com". The first comic was posted on 1 February 2003, though there were earlier prototypes. Dinosaur Comics has also been printed in two collections and in a...
  
  , by Ryan North
  Ryan North
  Ryan M. North is a Canadian writer, computer programmer, and occasional songwriter who is the creator and author of Dinosaur Comics, and co-creator of Whispered Apologies and Happy Dog the Happy Dog....
  
  .