Syllable stress in English

[nq:1]I teach an ESL course and last week a student asked me whether there were any "rules" in English for ... syllable words but did not find anything I could call a pattern. Can anyone provideme with some sort of answer?[/nq]
Yes, I have the answer. But I don't think you're going to like it...

Mark Barratt
Budapest

[nq:1]I teach an ESL course and last week a student asked me whether there were any "rules" in English for ... words but did not find anything I could call a pattern. Can anyone provide me with some sort of answer?[/nq]
By and large, words of Germanic origin stress the first syllable, and words of Latin origin stress a syllable that is reckoned from the tail of the word by some moderately comp

[nq:1]I teach an ESL course and last week a student asked me whether there were any "rules" in English for ... words but did not find anything I could call a pattern. Can anyone provide me with some sort of answer?[/nq]
Stress is phonemic in English (meaning that differing stress alone can distinguish two words); thus it is not fully predictable.

Chomsky & Halle, in The Sound Pattern

[nq:2]I teach an ESL course and last week a student ... pattern. Can anyone provide me with some sort of answer?[/nq]
I believe they did. IIRC their stock example was Tennessée (by itself) vs. Ténnessee Válley. But please don't make me go back and look it up (shudder).
Ross Clark

In sci.lang.translation benlizross (Email Removed) sanoi, hitaasti kuin hämähäkki:
[nq:2]Stress is phonemic in English (meaning that differing stress alone ... example to avoid being adjacent to the stress on ávenue?[/nq]
[nq:1]I believe they did. IIRC their stock example was Tennessée (by itself) vs. Ténnessee Válley. But please don't make me go back and look it up (shudder).[/nq]
Not

[nq:2]I believe they did. IIRC their stock example was Tennessée ... don't make me go back and look it up (shudder).[/nq]
You're not wanting me to look it up, are you?
[nq:1]Not that I would be surprised that Chomsky might be wrong about something, but at least I can say that this does not apply to proper names, which often have regional variations (Albany Georgia vs NY, for instance, or L

[nq:1]I teach an ESL course and last week a student asked me whether there were any "rules" in English for ... but did not find anything I could call a pattern. Can anyone provide me with some sort of answer? Thanks.[/nq]
The following guidelines will get you a lot of the way, but there's a substantial minority of words they can't account for:
1. There are some comparatively rare endings w

("Followup-To:" header set to alt.usage.english.)
[nq:1]6. Proper names are not generally excluded from these guidelines, but in a name of several words, the last is ... follow this rule unless the last component is 'Street', which is apparently felt not to be part of a name.[/nq]
In AmE "Street" isn't the only street/road name final-generic-component that does not get primary stress. Anot

[nq:1]"Broadway", by the way, is pronounced with "way" stressed by sufficiently elderly New Yorkers, at least with respect to the famous one in Manhattan (there's also one in Astoria, and there's an area of Flushing (and an LIRR station) called "Broadway").[/nq]
And there's also a Broadway in Williamsburgh (sic), Brooklyn (FLCIA).

[nq:1]3. The suffix '-ly' does not move the stress when added.[/nq]
It can, however, complicate matters by making a syllable pop up out of nowhere: advised has two syllables, but advisedly has four. (Surely the class of words thus affectable is tiny.)