Here's something that makes my skin crawl. I have noticed many people pronouncing the noun "permit" with the stress on the second syllable, /per-MIT/: "Can I get a per-MIT to do this?" I believe that it's /PER-mit/ and dictionaries agree with me, although some list /per-MIT/ as a secondary pronunciation. Everyone thinks the verb is the one pronounced /per-MIT/. So saying "the city gave me a /per-MIT/" sounds wrong.
A change in stress occurs in other noun-verb homographs--compare the noun /PRO-duce/ to the verb /pro-DUCE/. As with "produce," the noun usually stresses the first syllable, and the verb the second syllable. Here's a good list. This change in stress carries over to the nominalized form of the verb--/pro-DUC-tion/ is a noun that comes from the /pro-DUCE/, not the verb noun /PRO-duce/. Whence we get second syllable stresses in /per-MIT-ting/ and in /per-MIS-sion/, the noun form of the verb /per-MIT/.
Curiously, there seems to be another series. A government's procedure for issuing a (noun) /PER-mit/ is called the /PER-mitting/ process; in making a verbal gerund out of the noun, it ignores the second-syllable stress the verb typically gets. So we now have /PER-mitting/ as well as /per-MIT-ting/.
Of course, this latter series won't exist if you pronounce the noun /per-MIT/. By the way, I can't tell if per-MIT is a regionalism, and I've exhausted the dictionaries on the reference shelf at the New York Public Library.
