The decays of nonstrange positive parity excited baryons via emission of a pseudoscalar meson are studied in the framework of the 1/N_c expansion to order 1/N_c. In particular, the pionic decays of the l=0 Roper baryons and of the l=2 baryons in the mass interval 1680-1950 MeV are analyzed using the available partial decay widths. Decay widths by emission of an ν meson are shown to be suppressed by a factor 1/N_c² with respect to the pionic ones.