Criterion of Stress (St)

8.1. With composites, stress is sometimes indicative of derivational relationship between a substantive and a verb. Compound verbs with locative particles for a first member have the basic stress pattern middle stress / heavy stress, as outlive, underestimate whereas compound substantives have the heavy stress on the first element, as outhouse, undercurrent. A verb therefore which conforms to this latter stress pattern is characterized as a desubstantival verb. Cases in point are such verbs as outlaw, outline, outfit, understudy ‘act as understudy’ (for which OED gives the wrong stressing [...]).

8.2. To a certain extent, the criterion of stress applies to verbs of French and/or Latin origin which are monemes in English, but are etymologically analysable as ‘prefix + verb’ in Latin or French, as in conflict sb from conflict vb.

8.2.1. If the substantive is distinguished from the verb by stress, it must be considered a derivative from the verb, unless content criteria preclude such an analysis. This follows from the rule that desubstantival verbs retain the stress pattern of the underlying substantive (as in focus ‘bring into focus’ vb from focus sb). This postulate would apply to abstract ‘epitome’, compound, compress, concert ‘agreement’, conduct, confines, conflict, conscript, consort, construct, contest, contract BE (AE has forestress with both sb and vb), contrast, convert, digest, in sense ‘arrange methodically’ vb, ‘methodically arranged compen­dium’ sb, discount, escort, export, extract, ferment, import, impress, increase, insert, insult, intercept, invert, invite, perfume, permit, pervert, present ‘gift’, proceeds, produce, progress, protest, rebel, recess, regress, retail BE, survey, torment, transfer, transform, transplant, transport.

The substantives are all analysable as deverbal derivatives according to one of the sense groups typical of deverbal substantives.

8.2.2. The rule formulated above states nothing about endstressed nouns, (as nuance, cement, crusade, festoon) from which verbs are zero-derived. All denominal verbs (verbs derived from substantives or adjectives) retain the entire phonetic pattern of the respective nouns. Nor does our rule imply that substantives derived from end-stressed verbs should shift their stress. The tendency toward homologic stressing is observed with most deverbal substantives: advance, approach, attack, attempt are stressed like the corresponding verbs. Our rule does not apply either to the few adjectives which would seem to be derivationally connected with verbs: absent, present, subject cannot be regarded as derivatives from verbs. Nor can the verbs be derivatives from the adjectives. Deadjectival verbs can only follow the semantic patterns ‘make —’, ‘become —’, ‘be —’ into which the verbs absent and subject can be made to fit only with some semantic or syntactic restrictions. The verb absent occurs only in combinations with self -pronouns (absent oneself). Subject fits in only in sense ‘make liable to’ from subject adj. ‘liable to’ (as in subject to temptation). The verb present has no semantic connection with the adjective present for any speaker of present-day English. That the verbs fall outside the homologic stress and vowel pattern of deadjectival verbs, as already mentioned, that the verb absent oneself was coined on the analogy of present oneself rather than as a derivative from the adjective absent shall be added only for the sake of completeness.

8.2.3. The reason for the stress distinction was probably the awareness of educated speakers of the composite character of the verbs in French and/or Latin. In deriving substantives from the verbs, they followed the native pattern of words for which there existed both a verb and a substantive, differentiated only by stress, preparticle words of the type overthrow vb / overthrow sb, postparticle words of the type black out vb / blackout sb. A stress-distinctive pattern has developed chiefly with disyllabic words beginning with con-, trans-, pro-. It will be difficult to tell why others similarly structured, as detain, have not developed. But then we do not know either why some real prefixal verbs have developed stress-distinguished substantival derivatives (re- (a refill, etc.), mis- (a misprint, etc.), and inter- (an interchange), etc.) while others have not (dis-; un-; de-). At any rate we notice that of the many zero-derivatives from verbs of the detain type which were made in earlier stages of the language almost none have survived.