Now as a syllable bearing a secondary accent cannot become mute, as an unaccented syllable does, if required, it is evident that those inflexional syllables which follow upon long root-syllables and frequently do become silent cannot bear that secondary accent which has been ascribed to them by several scholars; on the contrary, all syllables subject in the same way to elision, apocope, syncope, and slurring must have the same degree of stress (i.e. they must be alike unaccented) whether preceded by short or by long root-syllables. Other terminations of disyllabic words which, though not inflexional, consist, like the inflexional endings, of _e_ + consonant, are treated in the same way, e.g. words like _fader_, _moder_, _finger_, _heven_, _sadel_, _giver_, &c. Only those inflexional and derivational endings which are of a somewhat fuller sound, as e.g., _-ing_, _-ling_, _-ung_, _-and_, _-ish_, and now and then even the comparative and superlative endings _-er_, _-est_, and the suffixes _-lic_, _-lich_, _-ly_, _-y_, may be looked upon as bearing a secondary accent, as they may be used at will either in the arsis of the verse or lowered to the state of unaccented syllables as the thesis. § =115.= In a trisyllabic simple word the root-syllable, of course, has the primary accent, and of the two following syllables, that which has the fuller sound, has the secondary accent, as in _áskedèst_, _wrítìnge_, _dággère_, _clénnèsse_, _híèste_. If, however, the two last syllables are equally destitute of word-accent, as e.g. in _clepede_, _lufede_, they are both metrically unaccented; and, as mentioned before (cf. § 96), may be shortened either to _lufde_, _clepte_, or to _lufed_, _cleped_. If they are used, however, as trisyllables in the iambic rhythm they naturally admit of the metrical accent on the last syllable. It is the same with compounds of nouns or adjectives. The first syllable takes the chief accent, and of the two others that has the secondary accent which is the root-syllable of the second part of the compound, as in _fréendshìpe_, _shírrève_, but _wódecràft_, _bóldelỳ_. In verbal compounds the primary accent, in conformity with the Old English usage, generally rests on the root-syllable of the verb, while the first and last syllable are mostly unaccented, as e.g. _alihten_, _bisechen_, _forgiven_, _ibidden_, _ofþunchen_. In denominatives, which in Old English have the primary accent on the first syllable, as e.g. _ándswarian_, both kinds of accentuation are allowed: _ánswere_ and _answére_.