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Starting from Basterrechea's description of intonation in the Guernica variety of Western Basque, a study was performed on accent and intonation with informants from the Biscayan town of Elorrio. Different interview techniques were employed, aimed at eliciting the particular syntactic structures, and pragmatic functions which play, or may play, a part in shaping the intonation pattern of the language. All interviews were tape-recorded and all findings based on auditory perception were backed up by computerized analyses of the variation of the fundamental frequency over the portions of speech under investigation.
Word accentuation in Elorrio appears to he governed by the accent rule (M)'H(M)L, which is carried over to multi-word NP's in focal position. Non-focal NP's display a flat L or M pitch contour, dependent on their position with respect to the verbal complex. The prominence lending shape of the pitch, which stretches over the first two syllahles of a word or focal NP, was found to be extremely stable and insensitive to variations in such parameters as number, interrogative, negative, comparative, superlative and emphasis. The variety of Basque spoken in Elorrio appears to be classifiable as a typical pitch-accent language.
