Stress variation in English This monograph is concerned with the question of why some English words have more than one stress pattern. E.g. overt vs. overt pulsate vs. pulsate etc. It is argued that cases such as these are due to the fact that the morphological structure of one and the same English word can sometimes be analyzed in more than one way. Thus overt is the stress pattern of the suffixation analysis over + t whereas overt is due to the prefixation analysis o + vert (cf. covert). Similarly pulsate is simultaneously pulse + ate (i.e. a suffixed derivative) and a back derivative from pulsatance.