In this paper, we develop an analysis of primary word stress in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). We evaluate the typological and language-specific arguments that are presented in the literature against the relevance of syllable weight in Portuguese, and show that none of them appears to be valid when confronted with cross-linguistic evidence or the facts of BP phonology. We then go on to show that stress in BP represents a mixed system, in which verbs receive stress as a function of the morphological categories of tense (past, present, future), whereas stress in non-verbs is prosody-based and sensitive to the distinction between heavy and light syllables. We finally propose a constraint analysis of this system, which we claim functions in the lexical part of a stratified model. 1 This does not necessarily imply that our conclusions regarding BP are as such transferable to Spanish. 2 This is particularly true for European Portuguese, as in Mateus (1983) and subsequent work by this scholar. For Spanish, a stem-based analysis was proposed by Wong Opasi (1987). Most recent studies on BP accent favor the weight-based approach, such as Magalhães (2004) and Massini-Cagliari (2005). See also Bisol (1992), where the morphology-based and weight-based analyses are compared. For BP, the stem-based analysis is most forcefully defended by Lee (1995) and subsequent work. Primary Word Stress in Brazilian Portuguese and the Weight Parameter 11 2.1 Kurylowicz's Universal One argument that is frequently mentioned to dismiss the relevance of a moraic approach to the stress rules of Portuguese, and also of Spanish and Italian, is based on the typological claim that contrastive vowel length is a prerequisite to weight-sensitive stress. The interest of the argument does not only derive from its persistence in the literature (see, among others,
The underlying system of consonants and vowels in Brazilian Portuguese (henceforth BP), together with the lexical and word-level phonological rules and the interactions between them, has been studied in great detail (see e.g. Harris 1974; Lopez 1979; Redenbarger 1981; Quicoli 1990). The detailed knowledge we possess in this area of BP phonology makes the language an excellent test case for evaluating theoretical innovations, especially since genuine descriptive and explanatory progress can only be achieved by virtue of improved theoretical models. The discussion in this paper will focus on the rules of Vowel Harmony (henceforth VH), Truncation, Neutralisation and Vowel Lowering in verbs (henceforth VL), for which a non-linear analysis will be proposed. One of the purposes of this paper is to show that a treatment of the BP vowel alternations in non-linear terms yields an elegant and explanatory description of a substantial part of the BP phonological component. Another goal is to present the theoretically relevant aspects of the BP facts. It will be argued that aperture distinctions in BP are advantageously represented by a single phonetic parameter, which will not only dispense with the features [high] and [low], but also with [ATR] or [tense], which have been frequently used to distinguish the two series of BP mid vowels. Also, further evidence will be provided in favour of the hypothesis advanced by a number of phonologists (see Clements 1991a; Odden 1991) that aperture features should be represented as constituents in the vocalic feature tree.
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