Stress in english words introduction

2.) Three-syllable words

• 
  primary + unstressed + secondary e.g. telegraph, organize, victimize, advertise
  
• 
  primary + unstressed + unstressed e.g. history, fantasy, messenger, memory
  
• 
  secondary + unstressed + primary e.g. kangaroo, uncontrolled, personnel
  
• 
  secondary + primary + unstressed e.g. unhappy, bilingual, approving, fantastic
  
• 
  unstressed + primary + unstressed e.g. continue, deliver, emotion, electric
  

3.) Compound words

A compound word refers to two words which are joined to form a new word. Some compounds are made of more than two words. However, we will restrict our attention to compounds that are made of two words. The main characteristic of compounds is that it can exist independently as English words. For example, a compound ‘science fiction’ is composed of two independent English words, which are
‘science’ and fiction.
Compounds are written in three different ways.

1. 
   As one word e.g. armchair, sunflower, teapot, keyboard, oversea, superman,
   
2. 
   As words separated by a hyphen e.g. fruit-cake, gear-change
   
3. 
   As two words separated by a space e.g. tea tree, horse racing, car park, car seat, milk float, baby boom
   

Commonly, compounds have the stress on the first element:
TYPEwriter KNOW-how
SUITcase RED-hot
POSTscipt PROOFread
GROWNup GOODwill
ROLLout STATEwide
STOCKroom SCHOOLroom
TEA-cup SUNrise
Compounds with adjectival first element and the –ed morpheme at the end usually stress on the first syllable of the second element.

bad-TEMpered			heavy-HANDed
old- FAshioned			half-HEARTed
hard-HEADed			hot-HEADed
kind-HEARTed			evil-MINDed
light-HEARTed			light-HEADed

empty-HANDed
Compounds in which the first element is a number in some form, the number in the initial position does not receive stress.

three-QUARters			second-CLASS
five-FINger			second-BEST
three-CORNered			one-SIDEd
four-SQUARE			five-STAR

However, the stress pattern is not always fixed. Stress position may change as a result of the stress on other words occurring next to the word in a question which is the case of connected speech that will be discussed further.
Also, it may result from the disagreement on the placement of some words by native speakers. But this is not a big problem and it would be wrong to say that which option is correct or incorrect, for example, the word “ice-cream” (either ICE-cream or ice-CREAM) and the word “kilometer” (either Kilometer or kiLOmeter).