# Abstract
This article explores the possibility that even though English and Portuguese present similar stress patterns on the surface, the two languages may be formally different: whereas English offers strong evidence for the foot, Portuguese does not.
We present new data on the relationship between syllable weight and antepenultimate stress in both languages. We experimentally show that weight effects in English are consistent with an analysis of stress that employs feet. Weight effects in Portuguese, in contrast, are not optimally accounted for by a foot-based analysis. Sonority effects captured in our experimental data from Portuguese further question the role that the foot plays in this language, but not in English. Additional evidence for the foot in English comes from word minimality constraints, which are never violated in the language, unlike in Portuguese, where violations are commonly observed both in the lexicon and in derived words.
