Trisyllabic laxing is a process in English which affects tense vowels and diphthongs. They become lax in word formation when followed by two or more syllables and the first syllable is stressed. The process first occurred in Old English.
Here are examples of trisyllabic laxing:
divine divinity
profound profundity
serene serenity
denounce denunciation
pronounce pronunciation
renounce renunciation
apply applicative
derive derivative
provoke provocative
impede impediment
school scholarly
sole solitude
fable fabulous
tyrant tyranny
vile vilify
In the cases of denounce, pronounce and renounce, the lax vowel in the nouns denunciation, pronunciation and renunciation does not carry primary stress but rather secondary stress. This stress shift is also evident in word pairs such as civilize/civilization, organize/organization and realize/realization. In these word pairs, however, trisyllabic laxing is optional.
Trisyllabic laxing has exceptions. The process does not apply in the following words:
alien alienate
brave bravery
danger dangerous
hyphen hyphenate
lone loneliness
moment momentary
motor motorist
nice nicety
The rule of trisyllabic laxing applies to many English words. The process first developed in Old English and affects tense vowels and diphthongs. They become lax when they are stressed and are in the third syllable or farther from the end of the derived form. However, this rule has exceptions.
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3 comments:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisyllabic_laxing Here, it says, “
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
Trisyllabic laxing, or trisyllabic shortening, is any of three processes in English in which tense vowels (long vowels or diphthongs) become lax (short monophthongs) if they are followed by two or more syllables, at least the first of which is “unstressed”.”
Thank you for your comment. In an example such as divine/divinity, it is clear that the first syllable in "divine" is unstressed. This is also the case with "divinity". However, the syllable which we want to focus on is the second syllable of "divine". The word has two syllables. The first is unstressed and the second is stressed. In "divinity" we have four syllables. The main stress is on the second. The word "divinity" has two more syllables than "divine" does. We have two extra syllables. However, trisyllabic laxing occurs because we have three syllables in which the first is stressed and the last two are unstressed. In the word "divinity", it is recommended that we ignore the first syllable for this analysis. I hope this is clear.
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