Northwest Journal of Linguistics 1.1:1 – 34 (2007) Extending the Prosodic Hierarchy: Evidence from Lushootseed narrative * David Beck, University of Alberta, and David Bennett, IBM Canada In the traditional Prosodic Hierarchy, the topmost level is the Utterance. This paper pre- sents evidence from Lushootseed narrative for a higher-level prosodic constituent, the Phonological Paragraph. Phonological Paragraphs are marked by patterns of Utterance- level F0 peaks, which decline over the length of the Paragraph and are reset to mark the beginning of a new discourse-level prosodic unit. Phonetic evidence for Phonological Paragraphs is supported by morphosyntactic data and coincides with components of nar- rative structure. These patterns, therefore, can not represent a random or involuntary epiphenomenon, but must be considered an integral part of the grammar. KEYWORDS: Lushootseed; narrative; Prosodic Hierarchy; communicative structure The prosodic constituent “Phonological Paragraph” proposed by Lehiste (1975, 1979) has traditionally been omitted from the Prosodic Hierarchy (Selkirk 1984; Nespor & Vogel 1986; Hayes 1989), where the topmost level is the Phonological Utterance (U). In this paper, we offer evidence from narrative in Lushootseed—a Salishan language of Washington State—for this higher-level prosodic constituent, delineated by F0 declination and reset which coincides with morphosyntactic and narrative structure. These results are consistent with previous findings in Chichewa (Carleton 1995, 1996), Kɔnni (Cahill 1995), and Mandarin Chinese (Yang 1998). We claim that, rather than being purely phonetic, these discourse-level constituents are a phonological marker of episodic structure and, as such, represent an extension of the Prosodic Hierarchy above the level of the Utterance. 1. The Prosodic Hierarchy The Prosodic Hierarchy (PH) represents a hierarchical ordering of the prosodic compo- nents of the grammar beginning with the Syllable and ending with the Utterance. Constituents within the PH are associated with various phonological rules and declination domains whose en- vironments are predictable vis-à-vis the boundaries of prosodic, rather than syntactic, constitu- ents. The standard prosodic constituents which compose the PH are given in (1): *The authors wish to acknowledge Mr. Edward Sam, Mrs. Martha Lamont, and Dr. T.M. Hess for contributing the recorded material for this study, and to thank Dr. Hess for his kind permission to reproduce the sound files acco- mapnying this paper. We would also like to thank Peter Avery, Mike Cahill, Trisha Causley, Elan Dresher, Nila Friedberg, Dell and Virginia Hymes, Bill Idsardi, Keren Rice, the University of Toronto Phonology Group, and the audiences at the Third Workshop on Structure and Constituency in the Languages of the Americas, the 1998 MOT Phonology Workshop, and the 33rd International Conference on Salish and Neighboring Languages for comments on earlier versions of this paper.