Wednesday, 7 March 2012

merrily, primarily

What effect does the suffix -ly have upon word stress?






  1. The m-w soundfile gives reso'lutely (and so would I), so this too is an Americanism.

  2. In the south of Ireland (for some people at least) genuine 'dʒɛnjuɪn becomes genuinely dʒɛnju'ɑɪnli.

  3. I think there are some indications of a rule here. I (an American) put secondary stress on the syllable that the stress shifts to when you add ily in military, voluntary, primary, arbitrary, articulatory, obligatory, and resolute. There is no secondary stress on the or in perfunctory, and the stress doesn't shift.

  4. But we don't all put initial stress on the initial syllable of resolute. We being English speakers in general. And me being one of those who doesn't.

    It could be the pronunciation with stress on the lute is an Americanism. In a check of online dictionaries, the two I checked that show that (in both cases as the 2nd pronunciation) are both dictionaries of American English.

    So, for me, it would be resoˈlute and resoˈlutely, with no stress shift.

  5. I have resoˈlute and resoˈlutely, but irˈresolute, if we take that to be a prefixed form.

  6. Isn't the reason why the first syllable of "resolutely" isn't stressed that English doesn't typically have more than two unstressed vowels in a row in a word? I find it difficult to say with the stress on the first syllable, along with "formidable".