‘Stress shift’

Wood (1987: 132) notes that in more Extreme CFE, the stress in polysyllabic verbs (actually, certain Latinate verb stems) occurs on the ultimate instead of the penultimate syllable, e.g. realíse, participáte, intoxicáted. He also notes that other, less systematic shifts occur. Such patterns also occurred very widely in my data (mainly from middle-class speakers); there were also many involving marked secondary stress (e.g. gráduàted). Such patternings also occur in other non-RP varieties (e.g. South African Indian English, Caribbean Englishes, Southern Hiberno-English, Scottish English), and would seem to reflect patterns of stress in earlier and/or regional British English. However, the issue is too complex to analyze in detail here.