I think it simply follows from the natural stress patterns of the English language. See here. Two syllable nouns generally have the stress on the first syllable. Many 3 syllable nouns also do. Words that depart from the natural stress patterns tend to be words borrowed from other languages, and there is a tendency for them to eventually get coerced into the native pattern if they are in the language long enough.
There might be something of interest to explore if female names are more likely to depart from that pattern--there may be a greater tendency to want to use foreign names or foreign pronunciations with female names, having to do with cultural notions of masculinity and feminimity (e.g. good Saxon words considered to sound manly, vs fancy French words).
You can't figure out the stress on a word ending in -ative from the corresponding word ending in -ation. That's because, as far as I can tell, all words ending in -ation are stressed on the second-to-last syllable. (This is true of the word declaration; the stress on the first syllable is secondary stress, which often occurs two syllables away from the main stress of a word.)
Instead:
If it's two syllables, the stress is on the first syllable.
If it's three syllables, the stress is probably on the first syllable. This may be different from where the stress is in the related verb.
- reláte, rélative
- negáte, négative
- sedáte, sédative
- abláte, áblative
- narráte/nárrate, nárrative
I know of only one three-syllable word with the stress on "-at-":
If it's four syllables or more, the primary stress is on the third-to-last syllable or earlier. (However, some polysyllabic words that end in "-ative" and have primary stress earlier than the third-to-last syllable may optionally have secondary stress on, or at least an unreduced /eɪ/ vowel in, the second-to-last syllable; e.g. "ímitative" may be pronounced as either /ˈɪmɪtətɪv/ or /ˈɪmɪteɪtɪv/.)
To get an idea of where an -ative word of four or more syllables is stressed, you can look at the related verb, if it exists. According to English Pronunciation in Use, by Martin Hewings,
In words ending -ative, stress is usually on the same syllable as in
the root word.
However, there are some exceptions to this rule that are just stressed on the third-to-last syllable instead, like "interrogative" (which is stressed on the "o", even though "interrogate" is stressed on the "e").
Examples
with the stress on the syllable before "-at-":
- accúse, accúsative
- decláre, declárative
- consérve, consérvative
- represént, represéntative
- provóke, provócative (note: the vowel has a different sound in these two words)
- fórm, fórmative
with the stress two syllables before "-at-"
- spéculate, spéculative
- admínister, admínistrative (with possible secondary stress on the second-to-last syllable)
- coóperate, coóperative
And there are also some words that don't have a corresponding verb (or at least not one that's commonly used):
Best Answer
All the number words for 13–19 are normally stressed on the first syllable (or none at all), but can be stressed on the second syllable for emphasis or contrast. It really depends on the sentence.
If you were counting out a sequence, you would never stress the -teen portion: