Suprasegmental features in Northern Paiute Free

The relationship between intonation and word-level stress in Northern Paiute (Western Numic; Uto-Aztecan) is described in order to support the level of phonology as a basis for the lexical, syntactic, and ideational integration of connected speech into intonation units (IUs). Word-level stress in Northern Paiute, intrinsic and in most cases peninitially fixed, is manifested by vowel lengthening and a rise in pitch. Intonation depends largely on the word-level pitch rises, minimalizing the frequency range for non-tonic accents and increasing it for most rising tonic accents of most IUs. The opposite pattern also occurs, whereby non-stressed syllables of individual words have an intonation pattern superimposed upon them; most tonic accents with falling pitch and a few with rising pitch over a non-stressed syllable distinguish this second category as independent from word-level stress. Although these two patterns can explain how suprasegmental features integrate words into larger, cohesive units, the deictic word class is an exception. Deictics in Northern Paiute lack intrinsic pitch, have extra-long vowels, and occur overwhelmingly in IU-final position. It is proposed that suprasegmental features serve as a cohesive force between the areas of linguistic structure by varying degrees of phonological integration.