1099: Positions of Stress: Lexical Stress (s.s.w.4) Dec 12, 2017

For most words, the stress does not really affect the meaning thereof, but there are occasions where stress is not simply a natural feature of a given term, but will change, for example, a lexical class (part of speech). For instance, for some nouns with corresponding verbal forms (or vice-versa) will have different stressing, such as ‘rebel’ or even ‘associate’, where primary or secondary stress is shifted to the end of the word when it is a verb. This type of stress, called ‘lexical stress’ or sometimes ‘word stress’, leads to more predictable positions for stress in English, where stressing can appear at first glance more or less random, unlike in ‘Finnish’ where the stress is always on the first syllable. Furthermore, words do not need to change lexical class to have variant lexical stress. ‘Defence’ in American English has stress on the first syllable when used for sports /ˈdiːˌfɛns/ whereas when the stress is on the second syllable, it tends to carry connotations the law or the military /dɪˈfɛns/. Some languages have tone that change the meaning of a word, but this is not the same.

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