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Most theories of modern phonology now seem to recognize that words consist of concatenations of syllables, as in (1), where each separate syllable conforms to the syllable restrictions of the language, be they linear, hierarchical, filterlike, template-like, or what have you. Furthermore, some models, such as the metrical phonology model adopted here, allow for larger possibilities at the left and right word-edges in the form of extrasyllabic elements, such as the final dentals of Herbst 'autumn' in German (Halle and Vergnaud 1980:95, after Haugen 1956). Schematically:(1) [ex] a a a [ex] Thus, words are concatenations of "possible syllables", while extrasyllabic elements are subject to the probably universal condition that they appear at the edges of relevant domains; see also Harris (1983) on the Spanish syllable and similar work by Hayes (1982) on English stress. Taking this concatenative view of syllable structure as our point of departure, we discuss in this paper a body of data from Dutch, which concern the situation depicted in (2). We will discuss the syllabic and metrical possibilities, including sonority and stress, of the right-hand word-edge containing and preceding schwa:The behavior of schwa in Dutch is the subject of a lively debate in phonological analyses of the language, and our specific purpose here will be to show how the various aspects of its behavior can be correlated within the metrical syllabic and accentual framework.

We investigated Dutch word stress acquisition in 3-year-old children at risk of dyslexia (children with at least one parent or older sibling with reading difficulties) and normally developing children, in order to shed light on language acquisition delays in children at risk of dyslexia, as well as to investigate further phonological deficits in dyslexia. The children had to repeat non-words with stress patterns varying in regularity. Both the at-risk and control children performed better on imitation of regular stress targets and worse on irregular and prohibited stress patterns. However, the at-risk children showed more difficulty imitating irregular and prohibited patterns, and had lower percentages phonemes correct than the control group. The results can be interpreted as a delay in word stress acquisition in the at-risk group. The findings thus point towards a phonological deficit early in language development.

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