1
Some endings add a part and change nothing else
Happy is strong on its first part. Happiness has one more part, and it is strong on the first part too. The ending is weak. It sits at the end and does not take the push.
Lesson · Word Stress · Endings
Endings That Leave It Alone
The last lesson was about endings that move the strong part. These six do not. Add -ness to happy and the strong part stays on the first part. Counted on word pairs from the 2,800, the strong part stays put in 185 of the 192 pairs, and the seven that move are mostly easy to explain.
-ly 83 of 87 -ment 31 of 32
-ness 6 of 6 -ful 7 of 7
-er 48 of 50 -able 10 of 10
the word keeps the strong part it had
Counted on pairs from the 2,800 words
Core ideas
What this lesson establishes
Three ideas. The second one matters most when you speak.
2
A student's mistake is to move it
A student who has just met -tion and -ity may move the push in every long word. That puts the push on the end of teacher, which is wrong. The word you started with is the guide for these six endings.
3
A pair is two words from the list that differ by the ending
The table forms a pair only where both the short word and the longer word are in the 2,800 and in the dictionary. It puts back a dropped -e or changed -y first, so argue and argument are a pair and so are happy and happiness.
The material
The pairs that move
Seven pairs of 192 have the strong part on a different part in the longer word. A few kinds explain them.
The last lesson gave seven endings that decide where the strong part goes. Most endings are not like that. When you add -ness to happy or -er to teach, you make a longer word that is strong on the same part as the word you began with. Each part is built around a vowel, a sound made with the mouth open, as in see, and the ending adds one more.
The rule
Add the ending, and leave the strong part where it was. The six endings the lab tests are these:
- -ly: quick, quickly. -ness: dark, darkness.
- -ment: agree, agreement. -er: teach, teacher.
- -ful: care, careful. -able: accept, acceptable.
How often the rule is right
Counted on this page, the strong part stays where it was in 83 of 87 pairs with -ly, 95.4%. It stays in 6 of 6 with -ness, 31 of 32 with -ment, 96.9%, 48 of 50 with -er, 96.0%, 7 of 7 with -ful and 10 of 10 with -able.
The table forms a pair only when the short word and the longer word are both in the 2,800 and in the pronouncing dictionary, after putting back a dropped -e or a changed -y. That is why -ness has only six: the list holds few words in -ness whose short word it holds too. One of the six, business and bus, is a pair by spelling only, and the table counts it all the same.
The four misses for -ly
Three of the four are long words where the dictionary marks a strong beat early and a smaller one later. With the ending the main beat moves later: absolute to absolutely, necessary to necessarily and primary to primarily. The fourth, perfectly, is a mistake of reading. The dictionary's first reading of perfect is the verb, as in to perfect a skill, which is strong on the second part. Perfectly goes with the adjective, a word for a quality, which is strong on the first.
The one miss for -ment, and the two for -er
Advertisement is the miss for -ment, shown in the worked example. The two for -er are career and researcher. Career is a false pair: it is not care with an ending but a word in -eer, and the last lesson's rule for -eer gets it right. Researcher is paired with research, and research is one of the 49 words of the first lesson that are said two ways, so the pair was tried against the wrong reading.
The table pairs by spelling and cannot tell a real ending from an accident, so it holds more false pairs than career, and nearly all of them land on the rule's side. Beer and be, bother and both, shoulder and should, offer and off, flower and flow, only and on, early and ear, comment and come and capable and cap are all counted right, because both words in each pair happen to be strong on the first part. So the false pairs help the rule a little, and career is the one that costs it. Strike them out by hand if you like. The table prints every pair.
Two words are scored in both lessons about endings. Career is one. The other is engineer, paired here with engine by spelling. The dictionary marks it with two strong beats, one early and one on -eer. The last lesson reads the last, and this lesson reads the first, and both are right for the beat they read.
Two limits. The sounds are American, from the dictionary's first reading of each word. And the table says where the push is, not which words an ending can join.
Interactive
Where the strong part falls
Each rule reads a word's class or ending; the dictionary says which part is strong
the rule—
words scored—
the rule is right—
share right—
wrong—
the words it gets wrong—
words said both ways—
weak parts with the flat vowel—
the flat vowel with r—
the vowel of sit—
the vowel of see—
Where the sounds come from
Every sound, part count and strong part here is read from the first pronunciation in CMUdict, the Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary, which records American speech. Its licence asks that this notice travel with anything made from it:
Copyright (C) 1993-2015 Carnegie Mellon University. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. The contents of this file are deemed to be source code. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. This work was supported in part by funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation of the United States of America, and by member companies of the Carnegie Mellon Sphinx Speech Consortium. We acknowledge the contributions of many volunteers to the expansion and improvement of this dictionary. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY NOR ITS EMPLOYEES BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Method
Adding an ending without moving the strong part
Four steps, then one check.
1
Say the short word and find its strong part
Agree is strong on its second part. Care has one part, and it is the strong one.
2
Check the ending is one of the six
-ly, -ness, -ment, -er, -ful or -able. If it is one of the seven in the last lesson, use that rule instead.
3
Say the longer word with the push where it was
Agreement is strong on its second part. Careful is strong on its first.
4
Keep the new part weak
The ending is quiet. Do not give -ful or -ness the vowel of the word they come from.
5
Check the short list of misses
Advertisement is one. The reasons for the others are below.
Check yourself
Score 0 / 0Choose the answer you can justify.
Four pairs and one that moves
The first four keep the strong part. The last is the one -ment pair that does not.
happy strong: first happiness first
agree strong: second agreement second
care strong: first careful first
teach strong: first teacher first
advertise strong: first advertisement second
In the first four the longer word is the short word with a weak part added. In advertisement the dictionary puts the strong part on the second part, ver, while advertise has it on the first. It is the only one of the 32 -ment pairs where the push moves.
Common mistakes
1
Thinking every ending moves the stressAfter -tion and -ity it is natural to guess that every ending does. These six do not. The strong part of happiness stays on the first part, as in happy, and the rule is right for 185 of 192 pairs.
2
Giving the ending a strong vowelThe ending -ful in careful is weak. Say it short, not as the word full. The same goes for -ment, -ness and -able.
3
Trusting a pair because the spelling matchesThe table pairs words by spelling. Beer is paired with be, bother with both and shoulder with should. These are false pairs, not words built with -er, and they are counted all the same.
Check your understanding
✓
Finish when you can add -ly, -ness, -ment, -er, -ful or -able to a word without moving its strong part.
You should be able to say where the strong part of the longer word is, read each ending's score off the table, and explain why the words that miss the rule miss it.
Note: These six endings and the seven of the last lesson are the whole of this course's rules for endings. If an ending is in the last lesson, count from the end. If it is one of these six, leave the push where it was.