text: Accentuation The Shtokavian dialect is divided into Old-Shtokavian and Neo-Shtokavian subdialects. The primary distinction is the accentuation system: although there are variations, "old" dialects preserve the older accent system, which consists of two types of falling (dynamic) accents, one long and one short, and unstressed syllables, which can be long and short. Both long and short unstressed syllables could precede the stressed syllables. Stress placement is free and mobile in paradigms.
  In the process known as "Neo-Shtokavian metatony" or "retraction", length of the old syllables was preserved, but their quality changed. Stress (intensity) on the inner syllables moved to the preceding syllable, but they kept the high pitch. That process produced the "rising" accents characteristic for Neo-Shtokavian, and yielded the modern four-tone system. Stress on the initial syllables remained the same in quality and pitch.
  Most speakers of Shtokavian, native or taught, from Serbia and Croatia do not distinguish between short rising and short falling tones. They also pronounce most unstressed long vowels as short, with some exceptions, such as genitive plural endings.
  The following notation is used for Shtokavian accents:
  The following table shows the examples of Neo-Shtokavian retraction:
  As result of this process, the following set of rules emerged, which are still in effect in all standard variants of Serbo-Croatian:
  Falling accents may only occur word-initially (otherwise it would have been retracted).
  Rising accents may occur anywhere except word-finally.
  thus, monosyllabic words may only have falling accent.
  Unstressed length may only appear after a stressed syllable.