Tonogenesis and the Kickapoo Tonal System

Abstract

Voorhis 1967 describes the suprasegmentals of pitch in Kickapoo as a system of "limited and unlimited intonations". The present paper seeks to identify the sentence-level pitch patterns, which correspond to what has usually been called "intonation", and to distinguish these from the predictable pitch phenomenon found in Kickapoo. The intonation patterns are found to closely resemble those found in another Central Algonquian language - Potawatomi. A possible origin of predictable low tone is investigated with a view to explaining it within the historical description of Central Algonquian and the generally accepted universals of the origin of tones.