Abstract
<p>This study provides experimental evidence for sonority-driven stress in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). We show that speakers systematically prefer final stress when the ultima contains a sonorant coda {N, l, r} rather than the obstruent coda {s}. The effect is specific to the ultima, the position where weight is otherwise most relevant to BP stress. A lexical analysis of monomorphemic words corroborates the experimental pattern: /s/-final words receive final stress less often than sonorant-final words. We further show that this asymmetry cannot be reduced to morphological factors (the plural suffix /-s/ is invisible to stress), nor to a sonority-free account on which final /s/ is a prosodic appendix. These findings bear on a contested question in metrical phonology (whether, and how, segmental sonority conditions stress placement), on which experimental evidence has so far been scarce.</p>