Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. In Linguistics, prosody (from Greek προσωδία) is the Rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech A syllable ( Greek:) is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds Mora (plural moras or morae) is a unit of sound used in Phonology that determines Syllable weight (which in turn determines stress A tone contour is a tone in a tonal language which shifts from one pitch to another over the course of the syllable or word Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a Syllable Register (sociolinguisticsIn Linguistics, a register language also known as a pitch-register language is a language which combines tone and vowel In Phonetics, downstep is a phonemic or Phonetic downward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language In Phonetics, upstep is a phonemic or Phonetic upward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language In Phonetics, downdrift is the cumulative lowering of pitch over time due to interactions among tones called Downstep, in a Tonal language Tone terracing is a type of phonetic Downdrift, where the high or mid tones, but not the low tone shift downward in pitch ( downstep) after certain A floating tone is a Morpheme or element of a morpheme that contains no Consonants no Vowels but only tone. Tone sandhi is the change of tone that occurs in some languages when different tones come together in a word or phrase Tone letters are Written characters that represent the tones of a language especially Contour tones that were invented by Yuen Ren Chao and adopted In Linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain Syllables in a word Secondary stress is the weaker of two degrees of stress in the Pronunciation of a word the stronger degree of stress is called 'primary' Vowel reduction is the term in Phonetics that refers to various changes in the acoustic quality of Vowels which are related to changes in stress In Phonetics, length or quantity is a feature of sounds that are distinctively longer than other sounds In linguistics a chroneme is a basic theoretical unit of sound that can distinguish words by duration only of a vowel or consonant In Phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken Consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short Consonant. In Linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a Vowel sound The International Phonetic Alphabet uses a Breve,, to indicate a speech sound (usually a Vowel) with less than normal duration In Linguistics, prosody (from Greek προσωδία) is the Rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech In Linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch whilst speaking which is not used to distinguish words In Linguistics, Speech synthesis, and Music, the pitch contour of a sound is a function or curve that tracks the perceived pitch of the sound In speech phonetic pitch reset occurs at the boundaries between Prosodic units Over the course of such units the median pitch of the voice declines from its In Linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain Syllables in a word Rhythm (from Greek ῥυθμός - rhythmos, "any measured flow or movement symmetry" is the variation of the length and accentuation of In verse, many meters use a foot as the basic unit in their description of the underlying rhythm of a poem Loudness is the quality of a Sound that is the primary psychological correlate of physical strength (amplitude In Linguistics, a prosodic unit, often called an intonation unit or intonational phrase, is a segment of speech that occurs with a single Language timing is the rhythmic quality of a particular type of speech in particular how Syllables are distributed across time Vowel reduction is the term in Phonetics that refers to various changes in the acoustic quality of Vowels which are related to changes in stress Pitch represents the perceived Fundamental frequency of a sound A language is a dynamic set of visual auditory or tactile Symbols of Communication and the elements used to manipulate them In Grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as tense, mood, voice All languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called intonation, but not all languages use tones to distinguish words or their inflections, analogously to consonants and vowels. In Linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch whilst speaking which is not used to distinguish words Such tonic phonemes are sometimes called tonemes. The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU

A slight majority of the languages in the world are tonal. However, most Indo-European languages, which include the most widely spoken languages in the world today, are not tonal.

In the most familiar tonal language, Chinese, tones are distinguished by their shape (contour), most syllables carry their own tone, words tend to be short, and many words are differentiated solely by tone. (This is more true in Cantonese than Mandarin. ) Tone also plays almost no grammatical role. In many African tone languages, such as most Bantu languages, however, tones are distinguished by their relative level, words are longer, there are fewer minimal tone pairs, and a single tone may be carried by the entire word, rather than a different tone on each syllable. The Bantu languages (technically Narrow Bantu languages) constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo family In Phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of Words or phrases in a particular Language, which differ in only one phonological element such as a Phone Often grammatical information, such as past versus present, "I" versus "you", or positive versus negative, is conveyed solely by tone.

Many languages use tone in a more limited way. Somali, for example, may only have one high tone per word. This article describes the Phonology (ie the sound system of the Somali language. In Japanese, less than half of the words have drop in pitch; words contrast according to which syllable this drop follows. Japanese Pitch accent is a feature of the Japanese language. It distinguishes words in most Japanese dialects though the nature and location of the accent for In Phonetics, downstep is a phonemic or Phonetic downward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language Such minimal systems are sometimes called pitch accent, since they are reminiscent of stress accent languages which typically allow one principal stressed syllable per word. Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a Syllable In Linguistics, stress is the relative emphasis that may be given to certain Syllables in a word However, the term "pitch accent" does not have a coherent definition.

Tonal languages

Languages that are tonal include:

• Some of the Sino-Tibetan languages, including the numerically most important ones. The Sino-Tibetan languages form a Language family composed of at least the Chinese and the Tibeto-Burman languages, including some 250 languages of Most forms of Chinese are strongly tonal (an exception being Shanghainese, where the system has collapsed to only a two-way contrast at the word level with some initial consonants, and no contrast at all with others); while some of the Tibetan languages, including the standard languages of Lhasa and Bhutan and Burmese are more marginally tonal. Shanghainese (上海閒話 in Shanghainese sometimes referred to as the Shanghai dialect, is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai Tibetan refers to a group of languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering South Asia as well as by overseas Lhasa, ( in English l̥ʰásə or in Tibetan; Chinese: 拉萨 Pinyin: Lāsà sometimes spelled Lasa, is the administrative capital of the The Kingdom of Bhutan (buːˈtɑːn is a Landlocked nation in South Asia. The Burmese language (မြန်မာဘာသာ myà̃mà bàθà MLCTS: myanma bhasa) is the official Language of Burma. However, Nepal Bhasa, the original language of Kathmandu, is non-tonal, as are several Tibetan dialects and many other Tibeto-Burman languages. Kathmandu (काठमांडौ येँ is the Capital and the largest city of Nepal.
• In the Austro-Asiatic family, Vietnamese and its closest relatives are strongly tonal. The Austro-Asiatic languages are a large Language family of Southeast Asia, and also scattered throughout India and Bangladesh. Vietnamese ( tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ) formerly known under French colonization as Annamese ( see Annam) Other languages of this family, such as Mon, Khmer, and the Munda languages, are non-tonal. The Mon language is an Austroasiatic language spoken by the Mon, who live in Burma and Thailand. Khmer (ភាសាខ្មែរ or Cambodian, is the language of the Khmer people and the official language of Cambodia. The Munda languages are a Language family spoken by about nine million people in central and eastern India and Bangladesh.
• The entire Tai-Kadai family, spoken mainly in China, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos, is strongly tonal. The Tai-Kadai languages, also known as Kadai, Kradai, or Kra-Dai languages and in China as Zhuang-Dong languages are a tonal
• The entire Hmong-Mien languages family is strongly tonal. The Hmong-Mien or Miao-Yao languages are a small Language family of southern China and Southeast Asia.
• Many Afro-Asiatic languages in the Chadic, Cushitic and Omotic families have register-tone systems, such as Chadic Hausa. The Afro-Asiatic languages constitute a Language family with about 375 languages ( SIL estimate and more than 300 million speakers spread throughout North Africa Hausa is the Chadic language with the largest number of speakers spoken as a first Language by about 24 million people and as a second language by about 15 Many of the Omotic tone systems are quite complex. However, many other languages in these families, such as the Cushitic language Somali, have minimal tone. Somali ( Af Soomaali, الصوماليه is a member of the East Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by ethnic Somalis
• The vast majority of Niger-Congo languages, such as Ewe, Maninka, Bamana, Yoruba, Lingala, and the Zulu, have register-tone systems. The Niger-Congo languages constitute one of the world's major language families, and Africa 's largest in terms of geographical area number of speakers and number Ewe (native name Ɛ̀ʋɛ̀gbè ὲβὲg͡bè is a Niger-Congo language spoken in Ghana, Togo and Benin by approximately five Maninka is the name of several closely related languages and dialects of the southeastern Manding subgroup of the Mande branch of the Niger-Congo languages Yoruba (native name èdè Yorùbá, 'the Yoruba language' is a Dialect continuum of West Africa with over 25 million speakers Zulu (called isiZulu in Zulu is a Language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers the vast majority (over 95% of whom live in South The Kru languages have contour tones. The Kru Languages belong to the Niger-Congo language family and are spoken in the area ranging from the south-east of Liberia to the east of Côte Notable non-tonal Niger-Congo languages are Swahili, Fula, and Wolof. Swahili (called Kiswahili in the language itself is the First language of the Swahili people (Waswahili who inhabit several large stretches The Fula language is a language of West Africa, spoken by the Ful{{IPA|ɓ}}e (Fula or Fulani people from Senegambia and Guinea to
• Possibly all Nilo-Saharan languages have register-tone systems. The Nilo-Saharan languages are a hypothetical group of African languages spoken mainly in the upper parts of the Chari and Nile rivers (hence the term
• All Khoisan languages in southern Africa have contour-tone systems. The Khoisan languages (also Khoesaan languages) are the indigenous languages of southern and eastern Africa; in southern Africa their speakers are the Khoi
• Slightly more than half of the Athabaskan languages, such as Navajo, have simple register-tone systems (languages in California, Oregon and a few in Alaska excluded), but the languages that have tone fall into two groups that are mirror images of each other. Athabaskan or Athabascan (also Athapascan, Athapaskan, Athabasca Indians or Athapaskes) is the name of a large group of closely Navajo or Navaho ( native name: Diné bizaad) is an Athabaskan language (of Na-Dené stock spoken in the southwest United States by That is, a word with has a high tone in one language will have a cognate with a low tone in another, and vice versa.
• All Oto-Manguean languages are tonal. Oto-Manguean languages (also Otomanguean) are a large family comprised of several families of Native American languages. Most have register-tone systems, some contour systems. These are perhaps the most complex tone systems in America.
• The Kiowa-Tanoan languages. Kiowa-Tanoan (also Tanoan-Kiowa) is a family of languages spoken in New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.
• Scattered languages of the Amazon basin, usually with rather simple register-tone systems.
• Scattered languages of New Guinea, usually with rather simple register-tone systems. New Guinea, located just north of Australia, is the world's second largest island, having become separated from the Australian mainland when the area now known
• A few Indo-European languages, namely Panjabi (source?), Ancient Greek, Vedic Sanskrit (source?), Swedish, Norwegian, Lithuanian, and Serbo-Croatian have limited word-tone systems which are sometimes called pitch accent or "tonal accents". Punjabi (pa ਪੰਜਾਬੀ in Gurmukhi script pa-PK {{Nastaliq پنجابی}} in Shahmukhi script Pañjābī in Transliteration) is an The Ancient Greek language is the historical stage in the development of the Hellenic language family spanning the Archaic (c Sanskrit (sa संस्कृता वाक् saṃskṛtā vāk, for short sa संस्कृतम् saṃskṛtam) is a historical Swedish ( is a North Germanic language spoken by more than nine million people predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the Norwegian ( norsk) is a North Germanic Language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language Lithuanian ( lietuvių kalba) is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognised as one of the official languages of the European Union. The Serbo-Croatian language or Croato-Serbian language (cрпскохрватски језик srpskohrvatski jezik) is a South Slavic Diasystem Generally there can only be one tonic syllable per word, and sometimes there are none.
• Some European-based creole languages, such as Saramaccan and Papiamentu, have tone from their African substratum languages. A creole language, or simply a creole, is a stable Language that originates seemingly as a nativized Pidgin. Saramaccan ( Autonym: Saamáka) is a Creole language spoken by about 24000 people near the Saramacca and upper Suriname Papiamento (or Papiamentu) is the Language spoken on the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao (the so-called In Contact linguistics, a substratum ( lat sub: under + stratum: layer → lower layer) is a Language

The vast majority of Austronesian languages are non-tonal, but a small number have developed tone. No tonal language has been reported from Australia. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Australia topics. With other languages we simply don't know. For example, the Ket language has been described as having up to eight tones by some investigators, as having four tones by others, but by some as having no tone at all. The Ket language, formerly known as Yenisei Ostyak, a Siberian language long thought to be an isolate, the sole surviving language of a Yeniseian language In cases such as these, the classification of a language as tonal may depend on the researcher's interpretation of what tone is. For instance, the Burmese language has phonetic tone, but each of its three tones is accompanied by a distinctive phonation (creaky, murmured or plain vowels). Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of Phonetics. It could be argued either that the tone is incidental to the phonation, in which case Burmese would not be phonemically tonal, or that the phonation is incidental to the tone, in which case it would be considered tonal. The phoneME project is Sun Microsystems reference implementation of Java virtual machine and associated libraries of Java ME with source licensed under the GNU Something similar appears to be the case with Ket.

A famous example of tone in Ancient Greek comes from Aristophanes' Frogs, where (l. Aristophanes (Ἀριστοφάνης ˌærɪˈstɒfəniːz in English ca Frogs ( Ancient Greek: grc Βάτραχοι grc-Latn Bátrachoi) is a comedy written by the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes. 304) Aristophanes mentions an instance at a performance of Euripides' play Orestes, where an actor pronounced galḗn' horō "I see calm waters" with so much empathy that it came out galên horō "I see a weasel". Euripides ( Ancient Greek:) (ca 480 BC–406 BC was the last of the three great tragedians of classical Athens (the other two being Aeschylus Orestes (Ορέστης / Orestēs) ( 408 BCE) is an Ancient Greek play by Euripides that follows the events of Orestes

Tone as a distinguishing feature

Most languages use pitch as intonation to convey prosody and pragmatics, but this does not make them tone languages. Pragmatics is the study of the ability of Natural language speakers to communicate more than that which is explicitly stated In tone languages, tone is phonemic, and thus minimal pairs distinguished by tone exist in such languages. In Phonology, minimal pairs are pairs of Words or phrases in a particular Language, which differ in only one phonological element such as a Phone

Here is a minimal tone set from Mandarin Chinese, which has five tones, here transcribed by diacritics over the vowels:

1. A high level tone: /á/ (pinyin <ā>)
2. A tone starting with mid pitch and rising to a high pitch: /ǎ/ (pinyin <á>)
3. A low tone which dips briefly before, if there is no following syllable, rising a high pitch: /à/ (pinyin <ǎ>)
4. A sharply falling tone, starting high and falling to the bottom of the speaker's vocal range: /â/ (pinyin <à>)
5. A neutral tone, sometimes indicated by a dot (·) in Pinyin, has no specific contour; its pitch depends on the tones of the preceding and following syllables. Mandarin speakers refer to this tone as the "light tone" (輕聲).

These tones combine with a syllable such as "ma" to produce different words. A minimal set based on "ma" are, in pinyin transcription,

1. māma "mother"
2. má "hemp"
3. mǎ "horse"
4. mà "scold"
5. ma (an interrogative particle)

These may be combined into the rather contrived sentence,

妈妈骂马的麻吗? (in traditional characters 媽媽罵馬的麻嗎?)

Pinyin: māma mà mǎ de má ma?

English:"Is Mother scolding the horse's hemp?"

A well-known tongue-twister in the Thai language is:

ไหมใหม่ไหม้ไหม

IPA: /mǎi mài mâi mái/

"Does new silk burn?"^[1]

Tones can interact in complex ways through a process known as tone sandhi. A tongue-twister is a phrase that is designed to be difficult to articulate properly Tone sandhi is the change of tone that occurs in some languages when different tones come together in a word or phrase

Register tones and contour tones

Tones fall into two broad patterns: Register tone systems and contour tone systems.

Most Chinese languages has contour tone systems, where the distinguishing feature of the tones are their shifts in pitch (that is, the pitch is a contour), such as rising, falling, dipping, or level. In Phonetics, contour describes speech sounds which behave as single segments but which make an internal transition from one quality place or manner to another Most Bantu languages, on the other hand, have register tone systems, where the distinguishing feature is the relative difference between the pitches, such as high, mid, or low, rather than their shapes. In many register tone systems there is a default tone, usually low in a two-tone system or mid in a three-tone system, that is more common and less salient than other tones. There are also languages that combine register and contour tones, such as many Kru languages, where nouns are distinguished by contour tones and verbs by register. The Kru Languages belong to the Niger-Congo language family and are spoken in the area ranging from the south-east of Liberia to the east of Côte Others, such as Yoruba, have phonetic contours, but these can easily be analysed as sequences of register tones, with for example sequences of high–low /áà/ becoming falling [âː], and sequences of low–high /àá/ becoming rising [ǎː]. Yoruba (native name èdè Yorùbá, 'the Yoruba language' is a Dialect continuum of West Africa with over 25 million speakers

Register languages

The term "register", when not used in the phrase "register tone", commonly indicates vowel phonation combined with tone in a single phonological system. Phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of Phonetics. Burmese, for example, is a register language, where differences in pitch are so intertwined with vowel phonation that neither can be considered without the other. The Burmese language (မြန်မာဘာသာ myà̃mà bàθà MLCTS: myanma bhasa) is the official Language of Burma. Register (sociolinguisticsIn Linguistics, a register language also known as a pitch-register language is a language which combines tone and vowel

Tone terracing and tone sandhi

Tones are realized as pitch only in a relative sense. 'High tone' and 'low tone' are only meaningful relative to the speaker's vocal range and in comparing one syllable to the next, rather than as a contrast of absolute pitch such as one finds in music. As a result, when one combines tone with sentence prosody, the absolute pitch of a high tone at the end of a prosodic unit may be lower than that of a low tone at the beginning of the unit, because of the universal tendency (in both tonal and non-tonal languages) for pitch to decrease with time in a process called downdrift. In Linguistics, a prosodic unit, often called an intonation unit or intonational phrase, is a segment of speech that occurs with a single In Phonetics, downdrift is the cumulative lowering of pitch over time due to interactions among tones called Downstep, in a Tonal language

Tones may affect each other just as consonants and vowels do. In many register-tone languages, low tones may cause a downstep in following high or mid tones; the effect is such that even while the low tones remain at the lower end of the speaker's vocal range (which is itself descending due to downdrift), the high tones drop incrementally like steps in a stairway or terraced rice fields, until finally the two merge and the system has to be reset. In Phonetics, downstep is a phonemic or Phonetic downward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language In Agriculture, a terrace is a leveled section of a Hilly cultivated area designed as a method of Soil conservation to slow or prevent the rapid This effect is called tone terracing. Tone terracing is a type of phonetic Downdrift, where the high or mid tones, but not the low tone shift downward in pitch ( downstep) after certain

Sometimes a tone may remain as the sole realization of a grammatical particle after the original consonant and vowel disappear, so it can only be heard by its effect on other tones. It may cause downstep, or it may combine with other tones to form contours. These are called floating tones. A floating tone is a Morpheme or element of a morpheme that contains no Consonants no Vowels but only tone.

In many contour-tone languages, one tone may affect the shape of an adjacent tone. The affected tone may become something new, a tone that only occurs in such situations, or it may be changed into a different existing tone. This is called tone sandhi. Tone sandhi is the change of tone that occurs in some languages when different tones come together in a word or phrase In Mandarin Chinese, for example, a dipping tone between two other tones is reduced to a simple low tone, which otherwise does not occur in Mandarin, whereas if two dipping tones occur in a row, the first becomes a rising tone, indistinguishable from other rising tones in the language.

Word tones and syllable tones

Another difference between tonal languages is whether the tones apply independently to each syllable or to the word as a whole. In Cantonese, Thai, and to some extent the Kru languages, each syllable may have any tone, whereas in Shanghainese, the Scandinavian languages, and many Bantu languages, the contour of each tone operates at the word level. Standard Cantonese is the standard variant of the Cantonese (Yuet language Thai (th ภาษาไทย, transcription: phasa thai, transliteration:; pʰāːsǎːtʰāj is the national and The Kru Languages belong to the Niger-Congo language family and are spoken in the area ranging from the south-east of Liberia to the east of Côte Shanghainese (上海閒話 in Shanghainese sometimes referred to as the Shanghai dialect, is a dialect of Wu Chinese spoken in the city of Shanghai The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages The Bantu languages (technically Narrow Bantu languages) constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo family That is, a trisyllabic word in a three-tone syllable-tone language has many more tonal possibilities (3×3×3=27) than a monosyllabic word (3), but there is no such difference in a word-tone language. For example, Shanghainese has two contrastive tones no matter how many syllables are in a word. Many languages described as having pitch accent are word-tone languages. Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a Syllable

Tone sandhi is an intermediate situation, as tones are carried by individual syllables, but affect each other so that they are not independent of each other. For example, a number of Mandarin suffixes and grammatical particles have what is called (when describing Mandarin) a "neutral" tone, which has no independent existence. If a syllable with a neutral tone is added to a syllable with a full tone, the pitch contour of the resulting word is entirely determined by that other syllable:

After high level and high rising tones, the neutral syllable has an independent pitch that looks like a mid register tone — the default tone in most register-tone languages. However, after a falling tone it takes on a low pitch; the contour tone remains on the first syllable, but the pitch of the second syllable matches where the contour leaves off. And after a low-dipping tone, the contour spreads to the second syllable: The contour remains the same (˨˩˦) whether the word has one syllable or two. In other words, the tone is now the property of the word, not the syllable. Shanghainese has taken this pattern to its extreme, as the pitches of all syllables are determined by the tone before them, so that only the tone of the initial syllable of a word is distinctive.

Notational systems

Due to the fact that tonal languages are found all over the world, several systems to mark tone have developed independently. In Asian and Meso-American contexts, numerical systems are most common, whereas IPA-style diacritic marks are used mainly in African contexts. Because of font-support issues, the International Phonetic Alphabet is not commonly used for complex contour tone systems; see under Chinese below for one work-around. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic

Africa

In African linguistics (as well as in many African orthographies), usually a set of accent marks is used to mark tone. The most common phonetic set (which is also included in the International Phonetic Alphabet) is found below:

Several variations are found. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic In many three tone languages, it is common to mark High and Low tone as indicated above, but to omit marking of the Mid tone, e. g. má (High), ma (Mid), mà (Low). Similarly, in some two tone languages, only one tone is marked explicitly.

With more complex tonal systems, such as in the Kru and Omotic languages, it is usual to indicate tone with numbers, with 1 for HIGH and 4 or 5 for LOW. The Kru Languages belong to the Niger-Congo language family and are spoken in the area ranging from the south-east of Liberia to the east of Côte The Omotic languages are spoken in southwestern Ethiopia. They are often regarded as belonging to the Afro-Asiatic languages. Contour tones are then indicated 14, 21, etc.

Asia

In the Chinese tradition, numerals are assigned to various tones. For instance, Standard Mandarin has five tones, and the numerals 1, 2, 3, and 4 are assigned to four tones, and the neutral tone is left numberless. Standard Mandarin, also known as Standard Spoken Chinese, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan Chinese dialects are traditionally described in terms of eight tones (six tones, from the perspective of modern linguistics), though many dialects do not have all of them. Outside standard Mandarin, the numerals 1 to 8 are assigned to these tones based on their historical origin. In neither of these systems does the numeral have anything to do with the pitch values of the tones. Tone 5, for example, has drastically different realizations in different dialects.

More iconic systems are to use tone numbers, or an equivalent set of graphic pictograms known as 'Chao tone letters'. Yuen Ren Chao (1892 &ndash 1982 was a Chinese American linguist and Amateur Composer. These divide the pitch into five levels, with the lowest being assigned the value 1, and the highest the value 5. (This is the opposite of equivalent systems in Africa and the Americas. ) The variation in pitch of a tone contour is notated as a string of two or three numbers. A tone contour is a tone in a tonal language which shifts from one pitch to another over the course of the syllable or word For instance, the four Mandarin tones are transcribed as follows (note that the tone letters will not display properly unless you have a compatible font installed):

A mid-level tone would be indicated by /33/, a low level tone /11/, etc. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA is a system of phonetic notation based on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic

Standard IPA notation is also sometimes seen for Chinese. One reason it is not more widespread is that only two contour tones, rising /ɔ̌/ and falling /ɔ̂/, are widely supported by IPA fonts, while several Chinese languages have more than one rising or falling tone. One common work-around is to retain standard IPA /ɔ̌/ and /ɔ̂/ for high-rising (/35/) and high-falling (/53/) tones, and to use the subscript diacritics /ɔ̗/ and /ɔ̖/ for low-rising (/13/) and low-falling (/31/) tones.

The Thai language has five tones: high, mid, low, rising and falling. Thai (th ภาษาไทย, transcription: phasa thai, transliteration:; pʰāːsǎːtʰāj is the national and It uses an alphabetic writing system which specifies the tone unambiguously. Tone is indicated by an interaction of the initial consonant of a syllable, the vowel, the final consonant (if present), and sometimes a tone mark. A particular tone mark may denote different tones depending on the initial consonant.

Vietnamese uses the Latin alphabet, and the 6 tones are marked by diacritics above or below a certain vowel of each syllable. Vietnamese ( tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ) formerly known under French colonization as Annamese ( see Annam) A diacritic ( also called a diacritic or diacritical mark, point, or sign, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation In many words that end in diphthongs, however, exactly which vowel is marked is still debatable. In Phonetics, a diphthong (also gliding vowel) (from Greek grc δίφθογγος "diphthongos" literally "with two sounds" or "with Notation for Vietnamese tones are as follows:

The Latin-based Hmong and Iu Mien alphabets use full letters for tones. Pitch The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, where it occurred only on the last syllable of a word in cases where the History An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels. See also Horn (diacritic Ɓ ɓ Ƈ ƈ Ɗ ɗ Ɠ ɠ The tilde (~ (/ˈtɪldə/ is a Grapheme with several uses The name of the character comes from Spanish, from the Latin titulus Overdot See also Anusvara Language scripts or transcription schemes that use the dot above a letter as a diacritical mark In Arabic romanization Hmong ( RPA: Hmoob) or Mong ( RPA: Moob) is the common name for a group of dialects of the West Hmongic (Chuanqiandian branch The Iu Mien language is one of the main languages spoken by the Yao people in China, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and more recently In Hmong, one of the eight tones (the ˧ tone) is left unwritten, while the other seven are indicated by the letters b, m, d, j, v, s, g at the end of the syllable. Since Hmong has no phonemic syllable-final consonants, there is no ambiguity. This system enables Hmong speakers to type their language with an ordinary Latin-letter typewriter without having to resort to diacritics. In the Iu Mien, the letters v, c, h, x, z indicate tones but, unlike Hmong, it also has final consonants written before the tone. The Iu Mien language is one of the main languages spoken by the Yao people in China, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and more recently

The Japanese language does not have tone, but does have downstep, so that 雨 áme (rain), with a drop in pitch after the first syllable, is distinguished from あめ ame (candy), which has no drop. is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities In Phonetics, downstep is a phonemic or Phonetic downward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language

The Americas

Several North American languages have tone, one of which is Oklahoma Cherokee, said to be the most musical of the Iroquoian languages. Cherokee has six tones (1 low, 2 medium, 3 high, 4 very high, 23 rising and 32 falling).

In Mesoamericanist linguistics, /1/ stands for High tone and /5/ stands for Low tone. It is also common to see acute accents for high tone and grave accents for low tone and combinations of these for contour tones. Several popular orthographies use ‹j› or ‹h› after a vowel to indicate low tone.

Southern Athabascan languages that include the Navajo and Apache languages are tonal, and are analyzed as having 2 tones, high and low. Southern Athabaskan (also Apachean) is a subfamily of Athabaskan languages spoken primarily in the North American Southwest (including Arizona Navajo or Navaho ( native name: Diné bizaad) is an Athabaskan language (of Na-Dené stock spoken in the southwest United States by Southern Athabaskan (also Apachean) is a subfamily of Athabaskan languages spoken primarily in the North American Southwest (including Arizona One variety of Hopi has developed tone, as has the Cheyenne language. Hopi is a Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the Hopi people (a Pueblo group of northeastern Arizona, USA although today some Hopi are monolingual The Cheyenne language ( Tsėhesenėstsestotse or in easier spelling Tsisinstsistots is a Native American language spoken in present-day Montana

The Mesoamerican language stock called Oto-Manguean is notoriously tonal and is the largest language family in Mesoamerica, containing languages including Zapotec, Mixtec, Chinantec, and Otomí, some of which have as many as 12 different tones (Zoogocho Zapotec) and others only two (Matlatzinca and Chichimeca Jonaz). Oto-Manguean languages (also Otomanguean) are a large family comprised of several families of Native American languages. Mesoamerica or Meso-America (Mesoamérica is a Region extending approximately from central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua, defined Zapotec language(s describes a group of closely-related indigenous Mesoamerican languages spoken by the Zapotec people from Mexico's southwestern-central The Mixtecan languages are a group of languages in the Otomanguean family of Mexico, spoken in total by approximately 550500 people The Chinantecs are an indigenous people that lives in Oaxaca and Veracruz, Mexico, especially in the districts of Cuicatlán Ixtlán de Juarez Tuxtepec The Otomi language is an indigenous language of Mexico, spoken across a number of central Mexican states by the ethnic group widely known as the Otomi but The Matlatzinca language, also called Tlahuica or Ocuiltec, is an indigenous language of Mexico spoken by the Matlatzinca people in the The Chichimeca Jonaz language is an indigenous language of Mexico spoken by around 200 Chichimeca Jonaz people in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico Other languages in Mesoamerica that have tones are Huichol, Yukatek Maya, Tzotzil Maya of San Bartolo and Uspantec Maya (Quiché of Uspantán), and one variety of Huave. The Huichol language is an Indigenous language of Mexico, belonging to the Uto-Aztecan Language family. Yucatec Maya ("Maaya T'aan" in the revised Orthography of the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala) is a Mayan language spoken in Tzotzil (native name Bats'i k'op; IPA k'opʰ is a Maya language spoken by the indigenous Tzotzil Maya people in the Mexican The K'iche' language ( Quiché in Spanish) is a part of the Mayan language family Huave may refer to the Huave language the Huave people

A number of languages of South America are tonal. For example, the Pirahã language has three tones. Pirahã (also spelled Pirahá, Pirahán; Portuguese: Pirarrã; Pirahã language xapaitíiso) is a Language spoken by the The Ticuna language isolate is exceptional for having five level tones (the only other languages to have such a system are the Trique language and the Usila dialect of Chinantec (both Oto-Manguean languages of Mexico). Tïcuna is a language spoken by approximately 40000 people in Brazil, Peru, and Colombia. The Trique (or Triqui) language is an Oto-Manguean language of Mexico spoken by the Trique indigenous group of the state of Oaxaca The Chinantecs are an indigenous people that lives in Oaxaca and Veracruz, Mexico, especially in the districts of Cuicatlán Ixtlán de Juarez Tuxtepec

Europe

Both Swedish and Norwegian have a phenomenon that is often called "tone", but it is better understood as a pitch accent, as it appears only in words of two or more syllables. Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a Syllable (Tones, according to the linguistic definition, are found on every syllable in tone languages. ) This pitch accent is mostly used prosodically, but also to differentiate two-syllable words depending on their morphological structure. In Linguistics, prosody (from Greek προσωδία) is the Rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech Morphology is the field of Linguistics that studies the internal structure of words These accents are usually referred to as accent 1 and accent 2 (or acute accent and grave accent), respectively. History An early precursor of the acute accent was the apex, used in Latin inscriptions to mark long vowels. Pitch The grave accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, where it occurred only on the last syllable of a word in cases where the For further explanation and examples, see the Swedish and Norwegian language articles. Swedish ( is a North Germanic language spoken by more than nine million people predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the Norwegian ( norsk) is a North Germanic Language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language

Number of tones

Languages may distinguish up to five levels of pitch, though it is possible that some of the Omotic languages of Ethiopia distinguish six. The Omotic languages are spoken in southwestern Ethiopia. They are often regarded as belonging to the Afro-Asiatic languages. Since tone contours may involve up to two shifts in pitch, there are theoretically 5*5*5 = 125 distinct tones. However, the most that are used in any one language is a tenth that number.

Several Kam-Sui languages of southern China have nine tones, if final consonants are not counted as additional tones, as they traditionally are in China. Kam-Sui languages (Dong-Shui are a branch of the Tai-Kadai languages. One of them, Ai-Cham (錦話), is said to have eleven tones. Ai-Cham is a language spoken in Libo County, Qiannan Buyei and Miao Autonomous Prefecture, Guizhou Province, People's Republic of China.

Preliminary work on the Wobe language of Liberia and Ivory Coast and the Chatino languages of southern Mexico suggests that some dialects may distinguish as many as fourteen tones, but many linguists have expressed doubts, believing that many of these will turn out to be sequences of two tones. The Chatino language is an indigenous Mesoamerican language, which is classified under the Zapotecan branch of the Oto-Manguean Language family

Tonal Consonants

Tone is often carried by the syllable, so syllabic consonants such as nasals and trills may bear tone. This is especially common with syllabic nasals, for example in many Bantu and Kru languages. The Bantu languages (technically Narrow Bantu languages) constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo family The Kru Languages belong to the Niger-Congo language family and are spoken in the area ranging from the south-east of Liberia to the east of Côte

Origin of tone

The historical origin of tone is called tonogenesis. Metathesis (məˈtæθəsɨs is a Sound change that alters the order of Phonemes in a Word. For the chemical term see Catabolism In Phonology, particularly within Historical linguistics, dissimilation is a phenomenon Fortition is a consonantal change from a 'weak' sound to a 'strong' one the opposite of the more common Lenition. Lenition is a kind of Consonant mutation that appears in many Languages Along with assimilation, it is one of the primary sources of historical change Lenition is a kind of Consonant mutation that appears in many Languages Along with assimilation, it is one of the primary sources of historical change Lenition is a kind of Consonant mutation that appears in many Languages Along with assimilation, it is one of the primary sources of historical change In Linguistics, assibilation is the term for a Sound change resulting in a Sibilant consonant Rhotacism may refer to several phenomena related to the usage of the Consonant R (whether as an Alveolar tap, Alveolar trill, or Lenition is a kind of Consonant mutation that appears in many Languages Along with assimilation, it is one of the primary sources of historical change Elision is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a Vowel, a Consonant, or a whole Syllable) in a word or phrase producing a result that is easier For other uses of the word syncope, see Syncope (disambiguation In Phonology, syncope ( Greek syn- + kopein Haplology is defined as the elimination of a Syllable when two consecutive identical or similar syllables occur In Phonetics and Historical linguistics, fusion is the merger of the features of two segment into one In Phonology and Historical linguistics, cluster reduction is the simplification of Consonant clusters in certain environments or over time Compensatory lengthening in Phonology and Historical linguistics is the lengthening of a Vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following Consonant In Phonology, epenthesis (/əˈpɛnθəsɪs/ Ancient Greek ἐπένθεσις - epenthesis from epi "on" + en "in" In Phonology, epenthesis (/əˈpɛnθəsɪs/ Ancient Greek ἐπένθεσις - epenthesis from epi "on" + en "in" In Phonology, epenthesis (/əˈpɛnθəsɪs/ Ancient Greek ἐπένθεσις - epenthesis from epi "on" + en "in" Prothesis in Linguistics (from Greek pro "before" + tithenai "to put" is the prepending of Phonemes at the beginning of a Paragoge is the addition of a sound to the end of a word Often this is due to Nativization, and a logical counterpart of Epenthesis, particularly vocalic epenthesis In Historical linguistics and Language contact, unpacking is the separation of the features of a segment into distinct segments In Historical linguistics, vowel breaking is the change of a Monophthong into a Diphthong or Triphthong. Assimilation is a common Phonological process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word (or at a word boundary Palatalization or palatalisation (ˌpælətəlɨˈzeɪʃən generally refers to two phenomena As a process or the result of a process "Lip rounding" redirects here See Roundedness for the lip rounding of vowels Final obstruent devoicing or terminal devoicing is a systematic phonological process occurring in languages such as German, Dutch, Polish Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance ( see below) assimilatory phonological process involving Vowels in some languages Consonant harmony is a type of "long-distance" phonological assimilation akin to the similar assimilatory process involving Vowels i James A Matisoff (born July 14, 1937) is a professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of California Berkeley and noted In Phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by Tone is the use of pitch in Language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is to distinguish or inflect words A floating tone is a Morpheme or element of a morpheme that contains no Consonants no Vowels but only tone. Sandhi ( Sanskrit saṃdhi sa संधि "joining" is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur at Morpheme Crasis (κρᾶσις is the contraction of a vowel or diphthong at the end of a word with a vowel or diphthong at the start of the following word In French, most written word-final Consonants are silent in most contexts Linking R and intrusive R are phonological phenomena that occur in many non- rhotic dialects of English. Consonant mutation is the phenomenon in which a Consonant in a word is changed according to its morphological and/or syntactic environment Tone sandhi is the change of tone that occurs in some languages when different tones come together in a word or phrase Hiatus (Latin "yawning" (haɪˈeɪtəs in Linguistics is the separate pronunciation of two adjacent Vowels sometimes with an intervening Glottal stop Tone is the use of pitch in Language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is to distinguish or inflect words Tone is frequently an areal rather than a genealogical feature: That is, a language may acquire tones through bilingualism if influential neighboring languages are tonal, or if speakers of a tonal language shift to the language in question, and bring their tones with them. In Linguistics, an areal feature is any typological feature shared by languages within the same geographical area In other cases, tone may arise spontaneously, and surprisingly quickly: The dialect of Cherokee in Oklahoma has tone, but the dialect in North Carolina does not, although they were only separated in 1838. Cherokee (ᏣᎳᎩ Tsalagi) is an Iroquoian language spoken by the Cherokee people which uses a unique syllabary writing system Year 1838 ( MDCCCXXXVIII) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian Calendar (or a Common

Very often, tone arises as a effect of the loss or merger of consonants. Phonemic differentiation is the phenomenon of a Language maximizing the acoustic distance between its Phonemes presumably to minimize the possibility of misunderstanding (Such trace effects of disappeared sounds, which is not restricted to tone, have been nicknamed Cheshirisation, after the lingering smile of the disappearing Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland. James A Matisoff (born July 14, 1937) is a professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of California Berkeley and noted Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865 is a novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson better known under the Pseudonym Lewis ) In a non-tonal language, voiced consonants commonly cause following vowels to be pronounced at a lower pitch than other consonants do. Voice or voicing is a term used in Phonetics and Phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless This is usually a minor phonetic detail of voicing. However, if consonant voicing is subsequently lost, that incidental pitch difference may be left over to carry the distinction that the voicing had carried, and thus becomes meaningful (phonemic). We can see this historically in Panjabi: the Panjabi murmured (voiced aspirate) consonants have disappeared, and left tone in their wake. Punjabi (pa ਪੰਜਾਬੀ in Gurmukhi script pa-PK {{Nastaliq پنجابی}} in Shahmukhi script Pañjābī in Transliteration) is an Breathy voice (also called murmured voice, soughing, or susurration) is a Phonation in which the Vocal cords vibrate as they do in If the murmured consonant was at the beginning of a word, it left behind a high tone; if at the end, a high tone. If there was no such consonant, the pitch was unaffected; however, the unaffected words are limited in pitch so as not to interfere with the low and high tones, and so has become a tone of its own: mid tone. The historical connection is so regular that Panjabi is still written as if it had murmured consonants, and tone is not marked: The written consonants tell the reader which tone to use.

Similarly, final fricatives or other consonants may phonetically affect the pitch of preceding vowels, and if they then weaken to /h/ and finally disappear completely, the difference in pitch, now a true difference in tone, carries on in their stead. Fricatives are Consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together Lenition is a kind of Consonant mutation that appears in many Languages Along with assimilation, it is one of the primary sources of historical change This was the case with the Chinese languages: Two of the three tones of Middle Chinese, the "rising" and "leaving" tones, arose as the Old Chinese final consonants /ʔ/ and /s/ → /h/ disappeared, while syllables that ended with neither of these consonants were interpreted as carrying the third tone, "even". Middle Chinese ( or Ancient Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese language spoken during Southern and Northern Old Chinese ( or Archaic Chinese as used by linguist Bernhard Karlgren, refers to the Chinese spoken from the Shang Dynasty ( Chinese Most dialects descending from Middle Chinese were further affected by a tone split, where each tone split in two depending on whether the initial consonant was voiced: Vowels following an unvoiced consonant acquired a higher tone while those following a voiced consonant acquired a lower tone as the voiced consonants lost their distinctiveness. Phonemic differentiation is the phenomenon of a Language maximizing the acoustic distance between its Phonemes presumably to minimize the possibility of misunderstanding

The same changes affected many other languages in the same area, and at around the same time (AD 1000–1500). The tone split, for example, also occurred in Thai, Vietnamese, and the Lhasa dialect of Tibetan. Thai (th ภาษาไทย, transcription: phasa thai, transliteration:; pʰāːsǎːtʰāj is the national and Vietnamese ( tiếng Việt, or less commonly Việt ngữ) formerly known under French colonization as Annamese ( see Annam) Lhasa, ( in English l̥ʰásə or in Tibetan; Chinese: 拉萨 Pinyin: Lāsà sometimes spelled Lasa, is the administrative capital of the Tibetan refers to a group of languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering South Asia as well as by overseas

In general, voiced initial consonants lead to low tones, while vowels after aspirated consonants acquire a high tone. When final consonants are lost, a glottal stop tends to leave a preceding vowel with a high or rising tone (although glottalized vowels tend to be low tone, so if the glottal stop causes vowel glottalization, that will tend to leave behind a low vowel), whereas a final fricative tends to leave a preceding vowel with a low or falling tone. Vowel phonation also frequently develops into tone, as can be seen in the case of Burmese.

Tone arose in the Athabascan languages at least twice, in a patchwork of two systems. Athabaskan or Athabascan (also Athapascan, Athapaskan, Athabasca Indians or Athapaskes) is the name of a large group of closely In some languages, such as Navajo, syllables with glottalized consonants (including glottal stops) in the syllable coda developed low tones, whereas in others, such as Slavey, they developed high tones, so that the two tonal systems are almost mirror images of each other. Navajo or Navaho ( native name: Diné bizaad) is an Athabaskan language (of Na-Dené stock spoken in the southwest United States by In Phonology, a syllable coda comprises the Consonant sounds of a Syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a Vowel Slavey (also Slave, Slavé) (pronounced) is an Athabaskan language spoken among the Slavey First Nations of Canada Syllables without glottalized codas developed the opposite tone—for example, high tone in Navajo and low tone in Slavey, due to contrast with the tone triggered by the glottalization. Other Athabascan languages, namely those in western Alaska (such as Koyukon) and the Pacific coast (such as Hupa), did not develop tone. Koyukon is an Athabaskan language spoken along the Koyukuk and middle Yukon River in western interior Alaska Hupa ( native name: Natinixwe Mixinewhe) is an Athabaskan language (of Na-Dené stock spoken in the Trinity valley in California by the Thus, the Proto-Athabascan word for "water" *tuː is toneless toː in Hupa, high-tone tó in Navajo, and low-tone tù in Slavey; while Proto-Athabascan *-ɢʊtʼ "knee" is toneless -ɢotʼ in Hupa, low-tone -ɡòd in Navajo, and high-tone -góʼ in Slavey. Kingston (2005) provides a phonetic explanation for the opposite development of tone based on the two different ways of producing glottalized consonants with either (a) accompaning tense voice (with high F0) or (b) creaky voice (with low F0) on the preceding vowel. The term stiff voice describes the pronunciation of consonants with a glottal opening narrower and the vocal cords stiffer than what occurs in Modal voice. is a futuristic racing video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES Vocal fry registerIn Linguistics, creaky voice (sometimes called laryngealisation, pulse phonation or vocal fry or glottal fry) Languages with "stiff" glottalized consonants and tense voice developed high tone on the preceding vowel and those with "slack" glottalized consonants with creaky voice developed low tone.

The Bantu languages also have "mirror" tone systems, where the languages in the northwest corner of the Bantu area have the opposite tones of other Bantu languages. The Bantu languages (technically Narrow Bantu languages) constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo family

Three Algonquian languages developed tone independently of each other and of neighboring languages: Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kickapoo. The Algonquian (also Algonkian, and pronounced both and) languages are a subfamily of Native American languages that includes most of the languages in the Algic The Cheyenne language ( Tsėhesenėstsestotse or in easier spelling Tsisinstsistots is a Native American language spoken in present-day Montana The Arapaho language (also Arapahoe is a Plains Algonquian language (an areal rather than genetic grouping spoken almost entirely by elders in Wyoming Fox (known by a variety of different names including Mesquakie, Meskwaki, Mesquakie-Sauk, Mesquakie-Sauk-Kickapoo, Sac and Fox In Cheyenne, tone arose via vowel contraction; the long vowels of Proto-Algonquian contracted into high-pitched vowels in Cheyenne, while the short vowels became low-pitched. In Kickapoo, a vowel with a following [h] acquired a low tone, and this tone later extended to all vowels followed by a fricative.

See also

• Pitch accent
• Tone terracing
• Downdrift
• Downstep
• Floating tone
• Tone contour
• Meeussen's rule
• Tone name
• Tonal language
• Musical language
• Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

Bibliography

• Bao, Zhiming. Pitch accent is a linguistic term of convenience for a variety of restricted tone systems that use variations in pitch to give prominence to a Syllable Tone terracing is a type of phonetic Downdrift, where the high or mid tones, but not the low tone shift downward in pitch ( downstep) after certain In Phonetics, downdrift is the cumulative lowering of pitch over time due to interactions among tones called Downstep, in a Tonal language In Phonetics, downstep is a phonemic or Phonetic downward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language A floating tone is a Morpheme or element of a morpheme that contains no Consonants no Vowels but only tone. A tone contour is a tone in a tonal language which shifts from one pitch to another over the course of the syllable or word Meeussen’s rule is the name for a special case of tone reduction in Bantu languages. In Chinese and Vietnamese, tone names are the names given to the tones these languages use A tonal language is a language that uses tone to distinguish words Musical languages are Languages based on Musical sounds either instead of or in addition to Articulation. The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den ( is a famous example of Constrained writing by Yuen Ren Chao which consists of 92 characters all with the sound shi (1999). The structure of tone. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511880-4.
• Chen, Matthew Y. 2000. Tone Sandhi: patterns across Chinese dialects. Cambridge, England: CUP ISBN 0-521-65272-3
• Fromkin, Victoria A. (Ed. ). (1978). Tone: A linguistic survey. New York: Academic Press.
• Halle, Morris; & Stevens, Kenneth. Morris Halle, né Pinkowitz is a Latvian-American Jewish linguist and an Institute Professor and professor Emeritus of linguistics (1971). A note on laryngeal features. Quarterly progress report 101. MIT.
• Hyman, Larry. 2007. There is no pitch-accent prototype. Paper presented at the 2007 LSA Meeting. Anaheim, CA.
• Hombert, Jean-Marie; Ohala, John J. ; & Ewan, William G. (1979). Phonetic explanations for the development of tones. Language, 55, 37-58.
• Kingston, John. (2005). The phonetics of Athabaskan tonogenesis. In S. Hargus & K. Rice (Eds. ), Athabaskan prosody (pp. 137-184). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing.
• Maddieson, Ian. (1978). Universals of tone. In J. H. Greenberg (Ed. ), Universals of human language: Phonology (Vol. 2). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Odden, David. David A Odden ( is professor of Linguistics at Ohio State University. (1995). Tone: African languages. In J. Goldsmith (Ed. ), Handbook of phonological theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Pike, Kenneth L. (1948). Kenneth Lee Pike ( June 9 1912 &ndash December 31 2000) also known during his life as Ken Pike, was an American linguist Tone languages: A technique for determining the number and type of pitch contrasts in a language, with studies in tonemic substitution and fusion. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. (Reprinted 1972, ISBN 0-472-08734-7).
• Yip, Moira. (2002). Tone. Cambridge textbooks in linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-77314-8 (hbk), ISBN 0-521-77445-4 (pbk).