rules for stress/use of 'wanting'

[mwight24]

I have student who is asking some pretty tough questions....here are a few that I hope you have the answer to.

1) Why do we never use the present continuous with the verb WANT? For example, we say "I am studying for the test" but not "I am wanting to do well on the test"

2) Are there rules for where the stress lies on ENglish words, or is it just a matter of memorization??

THanks you so much for your time,

Matt

[Tdol]

1- Certain verbs are rarely used in the progressive form: like, want, need, love, hate, understand, etc. They are often connected tofeeling, thought and emotions.
2- Not that I know of, sadly. There are some rules, but they are incomplete and so full of exceptions that they don't cover the language as a whole. If you see a new multisyllable word, do you know where the stress is? I don't- I thought 'episcopal' would be stressed on the third syllable until I was corrected.

[Casiopea]

In addition,

There are a few general rules, but they're based on word class. For example,

Noun: ob'ject
Verb: ob'ject

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