Learn English – A term for words that change pronunciation with part of speech

pronunciationsingle-word-requests

I'm talking about words like:

  • construct: CON-struct(n.), cun-STRUCT(v.)
  • present: PRE-sent(n.), pre-SENT(v.)
  • record: RE-cord(n.), ri-CORD(v.)

They are pronounced differently based on whether they are a noun or a verb.

Here are the terms I DON'T think would apply:

  1. Homograph: same spelling, different meanings: for example, bark (the sound of a dog) and bark (the skin of a tree).
  2. Homophone: same pronunciation, different meaning: for example, to and two
  3. Homonym: same pronunciation and spelling, different meanings: for example: bank (river bank or savings bank)
  4. Heteronym: same spelling, different pronunciations and meanings: for example bow (the front of a ship) and bow (a ranged weapon)

Bow is particularly interesting. It is a heteronym based on the two nouns I described. But in the sense of the body movement, the noun and the verb are pronounced alike (rhyming with wow), thus, not belonging to the category I've explained.

In fact none of the terms explained here on wikipedia satisfy my requirement.

I'm looking for the term for words that have same (or related at best, NOT different) meanings, same spelling and different pronunciation.

Specifically, different pronunciation depending on the part of speech. As against the words which have the same pronunciation in different parts of speech like bill, turn, case (or bigger ones like manoeuvre)

TL;DR:

Fill in the blank:

The noun and verb forms of construct are pronounced differently
because the word construct is a _____

or

The noun and verb forms of construct are pronounced differently
because they are _____s.

Best Answer

According to Wikipedia, this phenomenon is called the initial-stress-derivation , where the noun is an initial-stress-derived noun.

  • Initial-stress derivation is a phonological process in English, wherein stress is moved to the first syllable of any of several dozen verbs when they become nouns or adjectives. (This is an example of a suprafix.) It is gradually becoming more standardized in some English dialects, but is not present in all, and the list of affected words differs from area to area, and whether a word is used metaphorically or not. At least 170 verb-noun (or adjective) pairs exist. Some examples are:

    • conflict, as a verb, "I hope that won't conflíct in any way." as a noun, "There will be no cónflict."
    • record, as a verb, "Remember to recórd the show!". as a noun, "I'll keep a récord of that request."
    • permit, as a verb, "I won't permít that." as a noun, "We already got a pérmit."
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