Although BP and EP place primary stress exactly at the same position, secondary stress positioning is remarkably different, as can be noticed below. The examples present some possible instances of secondary stress (rhythmic stress) placement in both European and Brazilian Portuguese according to native speakers of each of the varieties. The syllables bearing primary stress are in bold and those bearing secondary stress are underlined:( Hulst notes that, in the majority of languages, the assignment of primary stress does not depend on prior exhaustive footing. Indeed, the assignment of primary and secondary stresses in Brazilian and European Portuguese is clearly independent.In this paper we assume that primary stress in Portuguese is part of the language's lexical