Through that pair, nitrogen can form an additional bond to hydrogen making it tetravalent and with a positive charge in ammonium salts.
Many nitrogen compounds can thus be potentially basic but its degree depends on the configuration: the nitrogen atom in amides is not basic due to delocalization of the lone pair into a double bond and in pyrrole the lone pair is part of an aromatic sextet.
[2] A CN bond is strongly polarized towards nitrogen (the electronegativities of C and N are 2.55 and 3.04, respectively) and subsequently molecular dipole moments can be high: cyanamide 4.27 D, diazomethane 1.5 D, methyl azide 2.17, pyridine 2.19.
[3] Carbon-nitrogen bond can be analyzed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).
Depending on the bonding states the peak positions differ in N1s XPS spectra.