Re: syllable importance

Dirk wrote:

<<I'm a bit skeptical about this. Plenty of counterexamples can be found:
'awesome', 'cross', 'eager', 'fake', 'ill', 'like', 'loath', 'mordant',
'placid', 'prime', 'real', 'right', 'rugged', 'wanton', 'wrong' all fit
within a trochaic frame but can't inflect; 'demure', 'mature',
'obscure', 'polite' don't fit within a trochaic frame but can inflect
(at least for some speakers; some sound better than others to me).>>

None of the ones you say work work for me at all, and some of the ones you
say don't do.   Every English speaker will have different judgments about this,
no doubt, but it does show that the general rule referencing the number of
syllables is active in our minds, and doing some work.

-David