Group 3: With some su#xes, we stress the su#x itself. The
su#xes in this group have all been borrowed from French,
where words tend to be stressed on the last syllable. The most
common ones are listed in Box 8.6.
techˈnique kitchenˈette volunˈteer
Group 4: Finally, many su#xes have no e"ect on word
stress. The stress stays on the same syllable where it was
before the su#x was added. Many of these su#xes are of
Germanic origin, although -al, -ize and -ment come from
Latin. The main su#xes in this group are listed in Box 8.7.
underˈstandable ˈbeautiful eˈmotionless
Exceptions: As with most rules, there are exceptions to
these, too. For example, ˈtelevision ends in the su#x -sion, so
we might expect it to be stressed on the second-to-last
syllable, but it’s actually stressed on the !rst. Creˈate might
be expected to be stressed earlier because of the su#x -ate.
There can also be di"erences among dialects or even between
individuals. For example, employˈee and cigarˈette are
predicted to have stress on the last syllable, and they often
do, but many people stress them di"erently: emˈployee on
the second syllable and ˈcigarette on the !rst. In a limited
number of words, two stress patterns are acceptable.Prefixes and stress
Unlike su#xes, pre!xes have little e"ect on word stress. The
pre!xes themselves are generally unstressed or weakly
stressed, and they don’t cause the stress to change in the rest
of the word. For example:- ˈcover unˈcover disˈcover reˈcover
- oˈbey disoˈbey
- curˈricular extracurˈricular
- apˈpraise reapˈpraise
Numbers ending in -teen and -ty
It’s often di#cult to hear the di"erence between pairs of
numbers like fourteen and forty or nineteen and ninety, even
for native speakers of English. When we look at the written
forms fourteen and forty, it seems that it should be easy to
tell them apart—just listen for the /n/ at the end of fourteen.
Unfortunately, though, people don’t usually pronounce these112