ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the results of several empirical studies on the acquisition of metrical phonology. The data have been collected from monolingual and bilingual children, as well as from monolingual adult and bilingual adult language learners. It also uses these data to make more general statements about: which native language (L1) representations transfer into the second language (L2) grammar; a principle of the Learning Theory known as Lexical Dependency and its relationship to interlanguage change, and the lexical parameterization hypothesis. The chapter presents an analysis of the acquisition of stress that draws on both universal principles and parameters. It also considers two ways of refining the Lexical Parameterization Hypothesis in terms of the location of parameters in the grammar. Wexler and Manzini proposed that there were two types of parameters: lexical and nonlexical. Nonlexical parameters are properties of grammars as a whole whereas lexical parameters reside in the lexicon.
