vowel of the infinitival form of the verb and associated changes as above, as does affixation by many, but not all, further derivational and inflectional suffixes beginning with stops, affricates, and other consonants. Ex. aiamaka 'to fight' aiamux-tvlli 'to fight confusedly'. The sounds m, n, and l are particularly labile in some environments. atama 'to eat' atu:-yella 'to leave off eating' (not atamayella). n from -Vna 'state' is often reduced to -V: when one would expect -Vn-. lt can disappear entirely before some consonants. vla 'to drink', vlnggu: or vnggu: 'to drink'. Initial h- in roots and affixes drops in many instances. Ex. kvna 'to float, be in boat'+ haina 'to walk, go' gives kvn-aina. ng (as in English 'hang') is purely morphophonetic, from terminal n before a velar consonant. Many instances of m before a labial consonant are similarly motivated. w after a passive/reflexive prefix m- often drops. w often vocalizes to u: or o: or drops (depending on preceding material): tu:- causative plus wvshta:gu: 'work' is tu:vshta:gu: 'make work'. y is also relatively labile- after reduced -ata- > -vhr- the suffix -yella 'to leave off' becomes -chella. In combination with preceding -a y often vocalizes: ki:pa 'woman' plus yamalim 'plural animates/people' becomes ki:paiamalim. Stress In recent analyses of the speech of remaining speakers, word stress was felt to be nondistinctive. However, in the mid-19th century Yahga Strait dialect (which is likely not the ancestor of the surviving one) word stress was distinctive at least at the level of the individual morpheme, with stress shifting in regular patterns during word formation. Certain otherwise identical word roots are distinguishable by different stress marking. No information is available about phrase or clause level stress phenomena from the Yahga dialect. Some roots, particularly those with doubled consonants, exhibit stress on both vowels flanking the doublet. Diphthongs appear to attract stress when they are morphophonetic in origin, sometimes removing it from vowels on both sides that would otherwise be stressed. The first vowel -V- (influenced by the preceding terminal root vowel) in -Vna '(be) in a state' also appears to attract stress, while -ata 'attain' repels stress to the left. Thus the combination -Vnata 'get into a state' is harmonious. Diphthongal attraction often trumps -Vna, drawing stress further left, while two successive diphthongs often have the stress on the rightmost one (counterintuitively). Syllables reduced morphophonetically generally lose whatever stress they might have carried.