English Stress With Tense and Lax Vowels

English stress is irregular. Unlike in languages such as Finnish and Japanese, it is not fixed. However, certain patterns occur in combination with tense and lax vowels.

In words such as amuse, complete, decide, machine and police, the stress is on the final syllable. However, in words such as abandon, astonish, cancel, solid and winter, the stress is penultimate. The rule for predicting stress is the quality of the vowel. The words with stress on the final syllable have tense vowels, and the words with antepenultimate stress have lax vowels. In both groups stress is placed on the final tense vowel of the word.

The words abrupt, correct, depend, exact and suggest have lax vowels in the final syllable and final-syllable stress. In another group of words, abandon, astonish, certain, consider and solid, the final vowel is also lax but the stress is penultimate. The difference is that the words of the first group end with a cluster of two consonants, but in the second group they end in only one consonant. The final vowel is lax in both groups, but words with a consonant cluster have final-syllable stress and words with one final consonant have penultimate stress.

Though English stress is not fixed, certain patterns can be observed. It is often the case that stress is placed on the final tense vowel of the word. In words which end with a lax vowel, stress is often placed on the final syllable in words which end with consonant clusters and on the penultimate syllable in words which end with a single consonant. It is important to emphasize that these are general rules because they contain exceptions.