Stress, Tone, and Pitch Accent

This chapter gives an overview of word-level prominence and pitch in the languages of North America. The diverse languages of this region show a wide range of properties, from stress similar to that found in English to complex tonal patterns reminiscent of East Asia or sub-Saharan Africa. Even languages that are fairly close in genetic relation can have quite different prominence patterns. Since it is impossible to discuss every language or every detail, the goal here is to give a sense of the variety of possibilities in stress, tone, and pitch accent systems. Topics covered include: directionality of orientation (leftward vs. rightward); binarity vs. ternarity; boundedness vs. unboundedness; regularity vs. lexical and/or morphological assignment; and interactions of stress, tone, and accent.