Tone (linguistics)

Not to be confused withIntonation (linguistics).

Sixtones of Vietnamese

The syllablemawith each of the primary tones in Standard Chinese

Toneis the use ofpitchinlanguageto distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or toinflectwords.All oral languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasis, contrast and other such features in what is calledintonation,but not all languages use tones to distinguish words or their inflections, analogously to consonants and vowels. Languages that have this feature are called tonal languages; the distinctivetone patternsof such a language are sometimes called tonemes,by analogy withphoneme.Tonal languages are common in East and Southeast Asia, Africa, the Americas and the Pacific.

Tonal languages are different frompitch-accent languagesin that tonal languages can have each syllable with an independent tone whilst pitch-accent languages may have one syllable in a word or morpheme that is more prominent than the others.

Mechanics

Most languages usepitchasintonationto conveyprosodyandpragmatics,but this does not make them tonal languages.In tonal languages, eachsyllablehas an inherent pitch contour, and thusminimal pairs(or larger minimal sets) exist between syllables with the same segmental features (consonants and vowels) but different tones.VietnameseandChinesehave heavily studied tone systems, as well as amongst their various dialects.

Below is a table of the six Vietnamese tones and their corresponding tone accent or diacritics:

Vietnamese tonesngang( "flat" ),huyền( "deep" or "falling" ),sắc( "sharp" or "rising" ),nặng( "heavy" or "down" ),hỏi( "asking" ), andngã( "tumbling" )

Tone name	Tone ID	Vni/telex/Viqr	Description	Chao Tone Contour		Diacritic	Example
				Northern	Southern
ngang"flat"	A1	[default]	mid level	˧(33) or˦(44)		◌	ma
huyền"deep"	A2	2 / f / `	low falling (breathy)	˧˩(31) or˨˩(21)		◌̀	mà
sắc"sharp"	B1	1 / s / '	mid rising, tense	˧˥(35) or˦˥(45)		◌́	má
nặng"heavy"	B2	5 / j /.	mid falling, glottalized, heavy	˧ˀ˨ʔ(3ˀ2ʔ)or˧ˀ˩ʔ(3ˀ1ʔ)	˩˨(12) or˨˩˨(212)	़	mạ
hỏi"asking"	C1	3 / r /?	mid falling(-rising), emphasis	˧˩˧(313) or˧˨˧(323) or˧˩(31)	˧˨˦(324) or˨˩˦(214)	◌̉	mả
ngã"tumbling"	C2	4 / x / ~	mid rising, glottalized	˧ˀ˥(3ˀ5) or˦ˀ˥(4ˀ5)		◌̃	mã

Mandarin Chinese,which hasfive tones,transcribed by letters with diacritics over vowels:

The tone contours of Standard Chinese. In the convention for Chinese, 1 is low and 5 is high. The correspondingtone lettersare˥˧˥˨˩˦˥˩.

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 with a slight fall (if there is no following syllable, it may start with a dip then rise to a high pitch): /à/ (pinyin⟨ǎ⟩)
4. A short, sharply falling tone, starting high and falling to the bottom of the speaker's vocal range: /â/ (pinyin⟨à⟩)
5. Aneutral tone,with no specific contour, used on weak syllables; its pitch depends chiefly on the tone of the preceding syllable.

These tones combine with a syllable such asmato produce different words. A minimal set based onmaare, inpinyintranscription:

1. mā(Mẹ/Mẹ) 'mother'
2. má(Ma/Ma) 'hemp'
3. mǎ(Mã/Mã) 'horse'
4. mà(Mắng/Mắng) 'scold'
5. ma(Sao/Sao) (aninterrogative particle)

These may be combined into atongue-twister:

Simplified:Mụ mụ mắng mã ma sao?

Traditional:Mụ mụ mắng mã ma sao?

Pinyin:Māma mà mǎde má ma?

IPA/mámamâmàtəmǎma/

Translation: 'Is mom scolding the horse's hemp?'

See alsoone-syllable article.

A well-known tongue-twister in Standard Thai is:

ไหมใหม่ไหม้มั้ย.

IPA:/mǎi̯mài̯mâi̯mái̯/

Translation: 'Does new silk burn?'

A Vietnamese tongue twister:

Bấy nay bây bầy bảy bẫy bậy.

IPA:[ɓʌ̌i̯nai̯ɓʌi̯ɓʌ̂i̯ɓa᷉i̯ɓʌ̌ˀi̯ɓʌ̂ˀi̯]

Translation: 'Recently, you've been setting up the seven traps incorrectly.'

A Cantonese tongue twister:

Một người nhân một ngày dẫn một nhận một ấn mà nhẫn

Jyutping:jat¹jan⁴jan¹jat¹jat⁶jan⁵jat¹jan⁶jat¹jan³ji⁴jan²

IPA:[jɐ́t̚jɐ̏njɐ́njɐ́t̚jɐ̀t̚jɐ᷅njɐ́t̚jɐ̀njɐ́t̚jɐnjȉːjɐ᷄n]

Translation: 'One person endures a day with one knife and one print.'

Tone is most frequently manifested on vowels, but in most tonal languages wherevoicedsyllabic consonantsoccur they will bear tone as well. This is especially common with syllabic nasals, for example in manyBantuandKru languages,but also occurs inSerbo-Croatian.It is also possible for lexically contrastive pitch (or tone) to span entire words or morphemes instead of manifesting on the syllable nucleus (vowels), which is the case inPunjabi.

Tones can interact in complex ways through a process known astone sandhi.

Phonation

In a number of East Asian languages, tonal differences are closely intertwined withphonationdifferences. InVietnamese,for example, thengãandsắctones are both high-rising but the former is distinguished by havingglottalizationin the middle. Similarly, thenặngandhuyềntones are both low-falling, but thenặngtone is shorter and pronounced withcreaky voiceat the end, while thehuyềntone is longer and often hasbreathy voice.In some languages, such asBurmese,pitch and phonation are so closely intertwined that the two are combined in a single phonological system, where neither can be considered without the other. The distinctions of such systems are termedregisters.Thetone registerhere should not be confused withregister tonedescribed in the next section.

Phonation type

Gordon and Ladefoged established a continuum of phonation, where several types can be identified.

Relationship with tone

Kuang identified two types of phonation:pitch-dependentandpitch-independent.Contrast of tones has long been thought of as differences in pitch height. However, several studies pointed out that tone is actually multidimensional. Contour, duration, and phonation may all contribute to the differentiation of tones. Investigations from the 2010s using perceptual experiments seem to suggest phonation counts as a perceptual cue.

Tone and pitch accent

Many languages use tone in a more limited way. InJapanese,fewer than half of the words have adrop in pitch;words contrast according to which syllable this drop follows. Such minimal systems are sometimes calledpitch accentsince they are reminiscent ofstress accentlanguages, which typically allow one principal stressed syllable per word. However, there is debate over the definition of pitch accent and whether a coherent definition is even possible.

Tone and intonation

Both lexical or grammatical tone and prosodicintonationare cued by changes in pitch, as well as sometimes by changes in phonation. Lexical tone coexists with intonation, with the lexical changes of pitch like waves superimposed on larger swells. For example, Luksaneeyanawin (1993) describes three intonational patterns in Thai: falling (with semantics of "finality, closedness, and definiteness" ), rising ( "non-finality, openness and non-definiteness" ) and "convoluted" (contrariness, conflict and emphasis). The phonetic realization of these intonational patterns superimposed on the five lexical tones of Thai (in citation form) are as follows:

Tone plus intonation in Thai

	Falling intonation	Rising intonation	Convoluted intonation
High level tone	˦˥˦	˥	˦˥˨
Mid level tone	˧˨	˦	˧˦˨
Low level tone	˨˩	˧	˧˧˦
Falling tone	˦˧˨,˦˦˨	˦˦˧,˥˥˦	˦˥˨
Rising tone	˩˩˦	˧˧˦	˨˩˦

With convoluted intonation, it appears that high and falling tone conflate, while the low tone with convoluted intonation has the same contour as rising tone with rising intonation.

Tonal polarity

Languages with simple tone systems orpitch accentmay have one or two syllables specified for tone, with the rest of the word taking a default tone. Such languages differ in which tone is marked and which is the default. InNavajo,for example, syllables have a low tone by default, whereas marked syllables have high tone. In the related languageSekani,however, the default is high tone, and marked syllables have low tone.There are parallels with stress: English stressed syllables have a higher pitch than unstressed syllables.

Types

Register tones and contour tones

"High tone" redirects here. For the tones in telephony, seeHigh tone (telephony).For the French band, seeHigh Tone.

Main article:Tone contour

In manyBantu languages,tones are distinguished by their pitch level relative to each other. In multisyllable words, a single tone may be carried by the entire word rather than a different tone on each syllable. Often, grammatical information, such as past versus present, "I" versus "you", or positive versus negative, is conveyed solely by tone.

In the most widely spoken tonal language,Mandarin Chinese,tones are distinguished by their distinctive shape, known ascontour,with each tone having a different internal pattern of rising and falling pitch.Many words, especially monosyllabic ones, are differentiated solely by tone. In a multisyllabic word, each syllable often carries its own tone. Unlike in Bantu systems, tone plays little role in the grammar of modern standard Chinese, though the tones descend from features inOld Chinesethat hadmorphologicalsignificance (such as changing a verb to a noun or vice versa).

Most tonal languages have a combination of register and contour tones. Tone is typical of languages includingKra–Dai,Vietic,Sino-Tibetan,Afroasiatic,Khoisan,Niger-CongoandNilo-Saharanlanguages. Most tonal languages combine both register and contour tones, such asCantonese,which produces three varieties of contour tone at three different pitch levels,and the Omotic (Afroasiatic) languageBench,which employs five level tones and one or two rising tones across levels.

Mostvarieties of Chineseuse contour tones, where the distinguishing feature of the tones are their shifts in pitch (that is, the pitch is acontour), such as rising, falling, dipping, or level. Most Bantu languages (except northwestern Bantu) on the other hand, have simpler tone systems usually with high, low and one or two contour tone (usually in long vowels). In such 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 relative-pitch and contour tones, such as manyKru languagesand other Niger-Congo languages of West Africa.

Falling tones tend to fall further than rising tones rise; high–low tones are common, whereas low–high tones are quite rare. A language with contour tones will also generally have as many or more falling tones than rising tones. However, exceptions are not unheard of;Mpi,for example, has three level and three rising tones, but no falling tones.

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. InCantonese,Thai,andKru languages,each syllable may have a tone, whereas inShanghainese,Swedish,Norwegianand manyBantu languages,the contour of each tone operates at the word level. 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 (phonemic) tones no matter how many syllables are in a word.Many languages described as havingpitch accentare word-tone languages.

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 Chinese suffixes and grammatical particles have what is called (when describing Mandarin Chinese) 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:

Realization of neutral tones in Mandarin Chinese

Tone in isolation	Tone pattern with added neutral tone	Example	Pinyin	English meaning
high˥	˥꜋	Pha lê	bōli	glass
rising˧˥	˧˥꜊	Bá bá	bóbo	elder uncle
dipping˨˩˦	˨˩꜉	Loa	lǎba	horn
falling˥˩	˥˩꜌	Con thỏ	tùzi	rabbit

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.

Lexical tones and grammatical tones

Lexical tones are used to distinguish lexical meanings. Grammatical tones, on the other hand, change thegrammatical categories.To some authors, the term includes both inflectional and derivational morphology.Tian described a grammatical tone, theinduced creaky tone,inBurmese.

Number of tones

Languages may distinguish up to five levels of pitch, though theChori languageof Nigeria is described as distinguishing six surface tone registers.Since tone contours may involve up to two shifts in pitch, there are theoretically 5 × 5 × 5 = 125 distinct tones for a language with five registers. However, the most that are actually used in a language is a tenth of that number.

SeveralKam–Sui languagesof southern China have nine contrastive tones, including contour tones. For example, theKam languagehas 9 tones: 3 more-or-less fixed tones (high, mid and low); 4 unidirectional tones (high and low rising, high and low falling); and 2 bidirectional tones (dipping and peaking). This assumes thatchecked syllablesare not counted as having additional tones, as they traditionally are in China. For example, in the traditional reckoning, theKam languagehas 15 tones, but 6 occur only in syllables closed with the voicelessstop consonants/p/,/t/or/k/and the other 9 occur only in syllables not ending in one of these sounds.

Preliminary work on theWobe language(part of the Wee continuum) of Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire, theTicuna languageof the Amazon and theChatino languagesof southern Mexico suggests that some dialects may distinguish as many as fourteen tones or more. TheGuere language,Dan languageandMano languageof Liberia and Ivory Coast have around 10 tones, give or take. TheOto-Mangueanlanguages of Mexico have a huge number of tones as well. The most complex tonal systems are actually found in Africa and the Americas, not east Asia.

Tonal change

Tone terracing

Main article:Tone terracing

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 sentenceprosody,the absolute pitch of a high tone at the end of aprosodic unitmay 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 calleddowndrift.

Tones may affect each other just as consonants and vowels do. In many register-tone languages, low tones may cause adownstepin 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 orterracedrice fields, until finally the tones merge and the system has to be reset. This effect is calledtone terracing.

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 calledfloating tones.

Tone sandhi

Main article:Tone sandhi

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. 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 Chinese, whereas if two dipping tones occur in a row, the first becomes a rising tone, indistinguishable from other rising tones in the language. For example, the words thực[xɤn˨˩˦]('very') and hảo[xaʊ˨˩˦]('good') produce the phrase thực hảo[xɤn˧˥xaʊ˨˩˦]('very good'). The two transcriptions may be conflated with reversed tone letters as[xɤn˨˩˦꜔꜒xaʊ˨˩˦].

Right- and left-dominant sandhi

Tone sandhi inSinitic languagescan be classified with a left-dominant or right-dominant system. In a language of the right-dominant system, the right-most syllable of a word retains its citation tone (i.e., the tone in its isolation form). All the other syllables of the word must take their sandhi form.Taiwanese Southern Minis known for its complex sandhi system. Example: Hàm kiam⁵'salty'; toan sng¹'sour'; ngọt tinn¹'sweet'; hàm chua ngọt kiam₇sng₇tinn¹'candied fruit'. In this example, only the last syllable remains unchanged. Subscripted numbers represent the changed tone.

Tone change

Tone changemust be distinguished fromtone sandhi.Tone sandhiis a compulsory change that occurs when certain tones are juxtaposed. Tone change, however, is a morphologically conditionedalternationand is used as an inflectional or a derivational strategy.Lien indicated that causative verbs in modernSouthern Minare expressed with tonal alternation, and that tonal alternation may come from earlier affixes. Examples: Trường tng⁵'long' vs. tng²'grow'; đoạn tng⁷'break' vs. tng²'cause to break'.Also, độc inTaiwanese Southern Minhas two pronunciations: to̍k (entering tone) means 'poison' or 'poisonous', while thāu (departing tone) means 'to kill with poison'.The same usage can be found in Min, Yue, and Hakka.

Uses of tone

In East Asia, tone is typically lexical. That is, tone is used to distinguish words which would otherwise behomonyms.This is characteristic of heavily tonal languages such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, andHmong.

However, in many African languages, especially in theNiger–Congofamily, tone can be both lexical and grammatical. In theKru languages,a combination of these patterns is found: nouns tend to have complex tone systems but are not much affected by grammatical inflections, whereas verbs tend to have simple tone systems, which are inflected to indicatetense and mood,person,andpolarity,so that tone may be the only distinguishing feature between "you went" and "I won't go".

InYoruba,much of the lexical and grammatical information is carried by tone. In languages of West Africa such as Yoruba, people may even communicate with so-called "talking drums",which are modulated to imitate the tones of the language,or bywhistlingthe tones of speech.

Note that tonal languages are not distributed evenly across the same range as non-tonal languages.Instead, the majority of tone languages belong to the Niger-Congo, Sino-Tibetan and Vietic groups, which are then composed by a large majority of tone languages and dominate a single region. Only in limited locations (South Africa, New Guinea, Mexico, Brazil and a few others) do tone languages occur as individual members or small clusters within a non-tone dominated area. In some locations, like Central America, it may represent no more than an incidental effect of which languages were included when one examines the distribution; for groups like Khoi-San in Southern Africa and Papuan languages, whole families of languages possess tonality but simply have relatively few members, and for some North American tone languages, multiple independent origins are suspected.

If generally considering only complex-tone vs. no-tone, it might be concluded that tone is almost always an ancient feature within a language family that is highly conserved among members. However, when considered in addition to "simple" tone systems that include only two tones, tone, as a whole, appears to be more labile, appearing several times within Indo-European languages, several times in American languages, and several times in Papuan families.That may indicate that rather than a trait unique to some language families, tone is a latent feature of most language families that may more easily arise and disappear as languages change over time.

A 2015 study byCaleb Everettargued that tonal languages are more common in hot and humid climates, which make them easier to pronounce, even when considering familial relationships. If the conclusions of Everett's work are sound, this is perhaps the first known case of influence of the environment on the structure of the languages spoken in it.The proposed relationship between climate and tone is controversial, and logical and statistical issues have been raised by various scholars.

Tone and inflection

Tone has long been viewed as a phonological system. It was not until recent years that tone was found to play a role ininflectional morphology.Palancar and Léonard (2016)provided an example with TlatepuzcoChinantec(anOto-Manguean languagespoken in SouthernMexico), where tones are able to distinguishmood,person,andnumber:

Forms of 'bend' in Tlatepuzco Chinantec

	1 SG	1 PL	2	3
Completive	húʔ˩	húʔ˩˥	húʔ˩	húʔ˧
Incompletive	húʔ˩˧	húʔ˩˧	húʔ˩˧	húʔ˧
Irrealis	húʔ˩˥	húʔ˩˥	húʔ˩˥	húʔ˧

InIau language(the most tonally complexLakes Plain language,predominantly monosyllabic), nouns have an inherent tone (e.g. be˧ 'fire' but be˦˧ 'flower'), but verbs don't have any inherent tone. For verbs, a tone is used to markaspect.The first work that mentioned this was published in 1986.Example paradigms:

Aspects in Iau

Tone	Aspect	ba 'come'	tai 'moving s.t. toward'	da 'locate s.t. inside'
tone 2	totality of action, punctual	ba˦ 'came'	tai˦ 'pulled'	da˦ 'ate, put it in (stomach)'
tone 3	resultative durative	ba˧ 'has come'	tai˧ 'has been pulled off'	da˧ 'has been loaded onto s.t.'
tone 21	totality of action, incomplete	ba˦˥ 'might come'	tai˦˥ 'might pull'
tone 43	resultative punctual	ba˨˧ 'came to get'	tai˨˧ 'land on s.t.'	da˨˧ 'dip into water, wash s.t.'
tone 24	telicpunctual	ba˦˨ 'came to end'	tai˦˨ 'fell to ground'	da˦˨ 'eaten it all up'
tone 23	telic, incomplete	ba˦˧ 'still coming'	tai˦˧ 'still falling'	da˦˧ 'still eating it up'
tone 34	totality of action, durative	ba˧˨ 'be coming'	tai˧˨ 'be pulling'
tone 243	telic durative	ba˦˨˧ 'sticking to'	tai˦˨˧ 'be falling'
			tai˦˥–˧˨ 'pull on s.t., shake hands'
			tai˦˥–˧ 'have pulled s.t., shook hands'

Tones are used to differentiatecasesas well, as inMaasai language(aNilo-Saharan languagespoken inKenyaandTanzania):

Case difference in Maasai

gloss	Nominative	Accusative
'head'	èlʊ̀kʊ̀nyá	èlʊ́kʊ́nyá
'rat'	èndérònì	èndèrónì

Certainvarieties of Chineseare known to express meaning by means of tone change although further investigations are required. Examples from twoYue dialectsspoken inGuangdong Provinceare shown below.InTaishan,tone change indicates the grammatical number of personal pronouns. In Zhongshan,perfectiveverbs are marked with tone change.

• Taishan

ngwoi˧	'I' (singular)
ngwoi˨	'we' (plural)

• Zhongshan

hy˨	'go'
hy˧˥	'gone' (perfective)

The following table compares the personal pronouns of Sixian dialect (a dialect ofTaiwanese Hakka)with Zaiwa and Jingpho(bothTibeto-Burman languagesspoken inYunnanandBurma). From this table, we find the distinction between nominative, genitive, and accusative is marked by tone change andsound alternation.

Comparison of personal pronouns

	Sixian	Zaiwa	Jingpho
1 Nom	ŋai˩	ŋo˥˩	ŋai˧
1 Gen	ŋa˨˦ or ŋai˩ ke˥	ŋa˥	ŋjeʔ˥
1 Acc	ŋai˩	ŋo˧˩	ŋai˧
2 Nom	ŋ̍˩	naŋ˥˩	naŋ˧
2 Gen	ŋia˨˦ or ŋ̍˩ ke˥	naŋ˥	naʔ˥
2 Acc	ŋ̍˩	naŋ˧˩	naŋ˧
3 Nom	ki˩	jaŋ˧˩	khji˧
3 Gen	kia˨˦ or ki˩ ke˥	jaŋ˥˩	khjiʔ˥
3 Acc	ki˩	jaŋ˧˩	khji˧

Phonetic notation

See also:Phonetic transcriptionandTone letter

There are several approaches to notating tones in the description of a language. A fundamental difference is betweenphonemicandphonetictranscription.

A phonemic notation will typically lack any consideration of the actual phonetic values of the tones. Such notations are especially common when comparing dialects with wildly different phonetic realizations of what are historically the same set of tones. In Chinese, for example, the "four tones"may be assigned numbers, such as ① to ④ or – after the historical tone split that affected all Chinese languages to at least some extent – ① to ⑧ (with odd numbers for theyintones and even numbers for theyang). In traditional Chinese notation, the equivalent diacritics⟨꜀◌꜂◌◌꜄◌꜆⟩are attached to theChinese character,marking the same distinctions, plus underlined⟨꜁◌꜃◌◌꜅◌꜇⟩for theyangtones where a split has occurred. If further splits occurred in some language or dialect, the results may be numbered '4a' and '4b' or something similar. Among theKradai languages,tones are typically assigned the letters A through D or, after a historical tone split similar to what occurred in Chinese, A1 to D1 and A2 to D2. (SeeProto-Tai language.) With such a system, it can be seen which words in two languages have the same historical tone (say tone ③) even though they no longer sound anything alike.

Also phonemic areupstepanddownstep,which are indicated by the IPA diacritics⟨ꜛ⟩and⟨ꜜ⟩,respectively, or by the typographic substitutes⟨ꜞ⟩and⟨ꜝ⟩,respectively. Upstep and downstep affect the tones within a language as it is being spoken, typically due to grammatical inflection or when certain tones are brought together. (For example, a high tone may be stepped down when it occurs after a low tone, compared to the pitch it would have after a mid tone or another high tone.)

Phonetic notation records the actual relative pitch of the tones. Since tones tend to vary over time periods as short as centuries, this means that the historical connections among the tones of two language varieties will generally be lost by such notation, even if they are dialects of the same language.

• The easiest notation from a typographical perspective – but one that is internationally ambiguous – is a numbering system, with the pitch levels assigned digits and each tone transcribed as a digit (or as a sequence of digits if a contour tone). Such systems tend to be idiosyncratic (high tone may be assigned the digit 1, 3, or 5, for example) and have therefore not been adopted for theInternational Phonetic Alphabet.For instance, high tone is conventionally written with a 1 and low tone with a 4 or 5 when transcribing theKru languagesof Liberia, but with 1 for low and 5 for high for theOmotic languagesof Ethiopia. The tone⟨53⟩in a Kru language is thus the same pitch contour as one written⟨35⟩in an Omotic language. Pitch value 1 may be distinguished from tone number 1 by doubling it or making it superscript or both.
• For simple tone systems, a series of diacritics such as⟨ó⟩for high tone and⟨ò⟩for low tone may be practical. This has been adopted by the IPA, but is not easy to adapt to complex contour tone systems (see under Chinese below for one workaround). The five IPA diacritics for level tones are ⟨ő ó ō ò ȍ⟩, with doubled high and low diacritics forextra highandextra low(or 'top' and 'bottom'). The diacritics combine to form contour tones, of which ⟨ô ǒ o᷄ o᷅ o᷆ o᷇ o᷈ o᷉⟩ have Unicode font support (support for additional combinations is sparse). Sometimes, a non-IPA vertical diacritic is seen for a second, higher mid tone, ⟨o̍⟩, so a language with four or six level tones may be transcribed ⟨ó o̍ ō ò⟩ or ⟨ő ó o̍ ō ò ȍ⟩. For theChinantecan languagesof Mexico, the diacritics⟨◌ꜗ◌ꜘ◌ꜙ◌ꜚ⟩have been used, but they are a local convention not accepted by the IPA.
• A retired IPA system, sometimes still encountered,traces theshapeof the tone (thepitch trace) before the syllable, where a stress mark would go. Thus level, rising, falling, peaking and dipping tones on [o] are ⟨ˉo ˊo ˋo ˆo ˇo⟩; these are read as high tones when contrasted with the low tones ⟨ˍo ˏo ˎo ꞈo ˬo⟩ or with mid tones, which are poorly supported by Unicode (e.g. falling ⟨˴o⟩). For a concrete example, when the diacritics are applied to theHanyu Pinyinsyllable [sa] used inStandard Chinese,it becomes easier to identify more specific rising and falling tones:[ˆsa](high peaking tone),[ˍsa](low level tone), etc. This system was used in combination with stress marks to indicate intonation as well, as in English[ˈgʊdˌɑːftə`nuːn](now transcribed[ˈgʊdˌɑːftə↘nuːn]).
• The most flexible system, based on the previous spacing diacritics but with the addition of a stem (like the staff of musical notation), is that of the IPA-adoptedChao tone letters,which are iconic schematics of the pitch trace of the tone in question. Because musical staff notation is international, there is no international ambiguity with the Chao/IPA tone letters: a line at the top of the staff is high tone, a line at the bottom is low tone, and the shape of the line is a schematic of the contour of the tone (as visible in apitch trace). They are most commonly used for complex contour systems, such as those of the languages of Liberia and southern China.

The Chao tone letters have two variants. The left-stem letters,⟨꜒꜓꜔꜕꜖⟩,are used fortone sandhi.These are especially important for theMin Chineselanguages. For example, a word may be pronounced/ɕim˥˧/in isolation, but in a compound the tone will shift to/ɕim˦mĩʔ˧˨/.This can be notated morphophonemically as⟨//ɕim˥˧꜓mĩʔ˧˨//⟩,where the back-to-front tone letters simultaneously show the underlying tone and the value in this word. Using the local (and internationally ambiguous) non-IPA numbering system, the compound may be written⟨//ɕim⁵³⁻⁴⁴mĩʔ³²//⟩.Left-stem letters may also be combined to form contour tones.

The second Chao letter variant are the dotted tone letters⟨꜈꜉꜊꜋꜌⟩,which are used to indicate the pitch ofneutral tones.These are phonemically null, and may be indicated with the digit '0' in a numbering system, but take specific pitches depending on the preceding phonemic tone. When combined with tone sandhi, the left-stem dotted tone letters⟨꜍꜎꜏꜐꜑⟩are seen.

Conventions for five-pitch transcription

Name	Top tone (extra-high)	High tone	High-mid tone	Mid tone	Low-mid tone	Low tone	Bottom tone (extra-low)
IPA tone diacritic	◌̋	◌́		◌̄		◌̀	◌̏
IPA tone letter		◌˥	◌˦	◌˧	◌˨	◌˩
Neutral tone letter		◌꜈	◌꜉	◌꜊	◌꜋	◌꜌
Sandhi tone letter		◌꜒	◌꜓	◌꜔	◌꜕	◌꜖
Sandhi neutral tone letter		◌꜍	◌꜎	◌꜏	◌꜐	◌꜑

Name	Falling tone	High falling tone	Low falling tone
IPA tone diacritic	◌̂	◌᷇	◌᷆
IPA tone letters	˥˩,˥˨,˥˧,˥˦, ˦˩,˦˨,˦˧, ˧˩,˧˨,˨˩	◌˥˧,◌˥˦,◌˦˧,&c.	◌˧˩,◌˧˨,◌˨˩,&c.

Name	Rising tone	High rising tone	Low rising tone
IPA tone diacritic	◌̌	◌᷄	◌᷅
IPA tone letters	˩˥,˩˦,˩˧,˩˨, ˨˥,˨˦,˨˧, ˧˥,˧˦,˦˥	◌˧˥,◌˦˥,◌˧˦,&c.	◌˩˧,◌˨˧,◌˩˨,&c.

Name	Dipping tone (falling–rising)	Peaking tone (rising–falling)
IPA tone diacritic	◌᷉	◌᷈
IPA tone letters	(various) ˨˩˨,˨˩˧,˨˩˦,˨˩˥, ˧˩˨,˧˩˧,˧˩˦,˧˩˥, ˧˨˧,˧˨˦,˧˨˥, ˦˩˨,˦˩˧,˦˩˦,˦˩˥, ˦˨˧,˦˨˦,˦˨˥, ˦˧˦,˦˧˥, ˥˩˨,˥˩˧,˥˩˦,˥˩˥, ˥˨˧,˥˨˦,˥˨˥, ˥˧˦,˥˧˥, ˥˦˥	(various) ˦˥˦,˦˥˧,˦˥˨,˦˥˩, ˧˥˦,˧˥˧,˧˥˨,˧˥˩, ˧˦˧,˧˦˨,˧˦˩, ˨˥˦,˨˥˧,˨˥˨,˨˥˩, ˨˦˧,˨˦˨,˨˦˩, ˨˧˨,˨˧˩, ˩˥˦,˩˥˧,˩˥˨,˩˥˩, ˩˦˧,˩˦˨,˩˦˩, ˩˧˨,˩˧˩, ˩˨˩

An IPA/Chao tone letter will rarely be composed of more than three elements (which are sufficient for peaking and dipping tones). Occasionally, however, peaking–dipping and dipping–peaking tones, which require four elements – or even double-peaking and double-dipping tones, which require five – are encountered. This is usually only the case whenprosodyis superposed on lexical or grammatical tone, but a good computer font will allow an indefinite number of tone letters to be concatenated. The IPA diacritics placed over vowels and other letters have not been extended to this level of complexity.

Africa

In African linguistics (as well as in many African orthographies), a set of diacritics is usual to mark tone. The most common are a subset of theInternational Phonetic Alphabet:

High tone	acute	á
Mid tone	macron	ā
Low tone	grave	à

Minor variations are common. In many three-tone languages, it is usual to mark high and low tone as indicated above but to omit marking of the mid tone:má(high),ma(mid),mà(low). Similarly, in two-tone languages, only one tone may be marked explicitly, usually the less common or more 'marked' tone (seemarkedness).

When digits are used, typically 1 is high and 5 is low, except inOmotic languages,where 1 is low and 5 or 6 is high. In languages with just two tones, 1 may be high and 2 low, etc.

Asia

In the Chinese tradition, digits are assigned to various tones (seetone number). For instance,Standard Mandarin Chinese,the official language of China, has four lexically contrastive tones, and the digits 1, 2, 3, and 4 are assigned to four tones. Syllables can sometimes be toneless and are described as having a neutral tone, typically indicated by omitting tone markings. Chinese varieties are traditionally described in terms of four tonal categoriesping('level'),shang('rising'),qu('exiting'),ru('entering'), based on the traditional analysis ofMiddle Chinese(seeFour tones); note that these are not at all the same as the four tones of modern standard Mandarin Chinese.Depending on the dialect, each of these categories may then be divided into two tones, typically calledyinandyang.Typically, syllables carrying therutones are closed by voiceless stops in Chinese varieties that have such coda(s) so in such dialects,ruis not a tonal category in the sense used by Western linguistics but rather a category of syllable structures. Chinese phonologists perceived thesechecked syllablesas having concomitant short tones, justifying them as a tonal category. InMiddle Chinese,when the tonal categories were established, theshangandqutones also had characteristic final obstruents with concomitant tonic differences whereas syllables bearing thepingtone ended in a simple sonorant. An alternative to using the Chinese category names is assigning to each category a digit ranging from 1 to 8, sometimes higher for some Southern Chinese dialects with additional tone splits. Syllables belonging to the same tone category differ drastically in actual phonetic tone across thevarieties of Chineseeven among dialects of the same group. For example, theyin pingtone is a high level tone in Beijing Mandarin Chinese but a low level tone in Tianjin Mandarin Chinese.

More iconic systems use tone numbers or an equivalent set of graphic pictograms known as "Chaotone letters".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 atone contouris notated as a string of two or three numbers. For instance, the four Mandarin Chinese tones are transcribed as follows (the tone letters will not display properly without acompatible fontinstalled):

Tones of Standard Chinese (Mandarin)

High tone	55	˥	(Tone 1)
Mid rising tone	35	˧˥	(Tone 2)
Low dipping tone	21(4)	˨˩˦	(Tone 3)
High falling tone	51	˥˩	(Tone 4)

A mid-level tone would be indicated by /33/, a low level tone /11/, etc. The doubling of the number is commonly used with level tones to distinguish them from tone numbers; tone 3 in Mandarin Chinese, for example, is not mid /3/. However, it is not necessary with tone letters, so /33/ =/˧˧/or simply/˧/.If a distinction is made, it may be that/˧/is mid tone in a register system and/˧˧/is mid level tone in a contour system, or/˧/may be mid tone on a short syllable or a midchecked tone,while/˧˧/is mid tone on a long syllable or a mid unchecked tone.

IPA diacritic 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 varieties have more than one rising or falling tone. One common workaround is to retain standard IPA/ɔ̌/and/ɔ̂/for high-rising (e.g./˧˥/) and high-falling (e.g./˥˧/) tones and to use the subscript diacritics/ɔ̗/and/ɔ̖/for low-rising (e.g./˩˧/) and low-falling (e.g./˧˩/) tones.

North America

Several North American languages have tone, one of which isCherokee,anIroquoian language.Oklahoma Cherokee has six tones (1 low, 2 medium, 3 high, 4 very high, 5 rising and 6 falling).TheTanoan languageshave tone as well. For instance,Kiowahas three tones (high, low, falling), whileJemezhas four (high, mid, low, and falling).

In Mesoamericanist linguistics, /1/ stands for high tone and /5/ stands for low tone, except inOto-Mangueanlanguages for which /1/ may be low tone and /3/ high 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. TheSouthern Athabascan languagesthat include theNavajoandApache languagesare tonal, and are analyzed as having two tones: high and low. One variety ofHopihas developed tone, as has theCheyenne language.

Tone orthographies

In Roman script orthographies, a number of approaches are used. Diacritics are common, as inpinyin,but they tend to be omitted.Thaiuses a combination of redundant consonants and diacritics. Tone letters may also be used, for example inHmong RPAand several minority languages in China. Tone may simply be ignored, as is possible even for highly tonal languages: for example, the Chinese navy has successfully used toneless pinyin in government telegraph communications for decades. Likewise, Chinese reporters abroad may file their stories in toneless pinyin.Dungan,a variety of Mandarin Chinese spoken in Central Asia, has, since 1927, been written in orthographies that do not indicate tone.Ndjuka,in which tone is less important, ignores tone except for a negative marker. However, the reverse is also true: in the Congo, there have been complaints from readers that newspapers written in orthographies without tone marking are insufficiently legible.

Standard CentralThaihas five tones–mid, low, falling, high and rising–often indicated respectively by the numbers zero, one, two, three and four. TheThai Alpha betis anAlpha syllabary,which specifies the tone unambiguously. Tone is indicated by an interaction of the initial consonant of a syllable, the vowel length, the final consonant (if present), and sometimes a tone mark. A particular tone mark may denote different tones depending on the initial consonant. TheShan Alpha bet,derived from theBurmese script,has five tone letters:ႇ,ႈ,း,ႉ,ႊ;a sixth tone is unmarked.

Vietnameseuses the Latin Alpha bet and its six tones are marked by letters withdiacriticsabove or below a certain vowel. Basic notation for Vietnamese tones are as follows:

Tones of Vietnamese

Name	Contour	Diacritic	Example
ngang	mid level,˧	not marked	a
huyền	low falling,˨˩	grave accent	à
sắc	high rising,˧˥	acute accent	á
hỏi	dipping,˧˩˧	hook above	ả
ngã	creaky rising,˧ˀ˦˥	tilde	ã
nặng	creaky falling,˨˩ˀ	dot below	ạ

The Latin-basedHmongandIu MienAlpha bets use full letters for tones. In Hmong, one of the eight tones (the˧tone) is left unwritten while the other seven are indicated by the lettersb, m, d, j, v, s, gat the end of the syllable. Since Hmong has no phonemic syllable-final consonants, there is no ambiguity. That system enables Hmong speakers to type their language with an ordinary Latin-letter keyboard without having to resort to diacritics. In theIu Mien,the lettersv, c, h, x, zindicate tones but unlike Hmong, it also has final consonants written before the tone.

TheStandard ZhuangandZhuang languagesused to use a unique set of six "tone letters" based on the shapes of numbers, but slightly modified, to depict what tone a syllable was in. This was replaced in 1982 with the use of normal letters in the same manner, like Hmong.

The syllabary of theNuosu languagedepicts tone in a unique manner, having separate glyphs for each tone other than for the mid-rising tone, which is denoted by the addition of a diacritic. Take the difference between ꉬ nge [ŋɯ³³], and ꉫ ngex [ŋɯ³⁴]. In romanisation, the letters t, x, and p are used to demarcate tone. As codas are forbidden in Nuosu there is no ambiguity.

Origin and development

André-Georges Haudricourtestablished that Vietnamese tone originated in earlier consonantal contrasts and suggested similar mechanisms for Chinese.It is now widely held that Old Chinese did not have phonemically contrastive tone.The historical origin of tone is calledtonogenesis,a term coined byJames Matisoff.

Tone as an areal feature

Tone is sometimes anarealrather than aphylogeneticfeature. That is to say, a language may acquire tones through bilingualism if influential neighbouring languages are tonal or if speakers of a tonal languageshiftto the language in question and bring their tones with them. The process is referred to ascontact-induced tonogenesisby linguists.In other cases, tone may arise spontaneously and surprisingly fast: the dialect ofCherokeein Oklahoma has tone, but the dialect in North Carolina does not, even though they were onlyseparatedin 1838.Hong Kong Englishis tonal.

Examples

Tone arose in theAthabascan languagesat least twice, in a patchwork of two systems. In some languages, such asNavajo,syllables with glottalized consonants (including glottal stops) in thesyllable codadeveloped low tones, whereas in others, such asSlavey,they developed high tones, so that the two tonal systems are almost mirror images of each other. Syllables without glottalized codas developed the opposite tone. For example, high tone in Navajo and low tone in Slavey are due to contrast with the tone triggered by the glottalization.

Other Athabascan languages, namely those in western Alaska (such asKoyukon) and the Pacific coast (such asHupa), did not develop tone. Thus, the Proto-Athabascan word*tuː('water') is tonelesstoːin Hupa, high-tonetóin Navajo, and low-tonetùin Slavey; while Proto-Athabascan*-ɢʊtʼ('knee') is toneless-ɢotʼin Hupa, low-tone-ɡòdin Navajo, and high-tone-ɡóʔin Slavey.Kingston (2005)provides a phonetic explanation for the opposite development of tone based on the two different ways of producing glottalized consonants with eithertense voiceon the preceding vowel, which tends to produce a highfundamental frequency,orcreaky voice,which tends to produce a low fundamental frequency. 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.

TheBantu languagesalso have "mirror" tone systems in which the languages in the northwest corner of the Bantu area have the opposite tones of other Bantu languages.

ThreeAlgonquian languagesdeveloped tone independently of one another and of neighboring languages:Cheyenne,Arapaho,andKickapoo.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. InAfrikaansthe glottal fricative also lowers the tone of surrounding vowels.

InMohawk,a glottal stop can disappear in a combination ofmorphemes,leaving behind a long falling tone. Note that it has the reverse effect of the postulated rising tone inCantoneseorMiddle Chinese,derived from a lost final glottal stop.

InKorean,a 2013 study which compared voice recordings of Seoul speech from 1935 and 2005 found that in recent years,lenis consonants(ㅂㅈㄷㄱ),aspirated consonants(ㅍㅊㅌㅋ) and fortis consonants (ㅃㅉㄸㄲ) were shifting from a distinction viavoice onset timeto that of pitch change, and suggests that the modernSeoul dialectis currently undergoing tonogenesis.These sound shifts still show variations among different speakers, suggesting that the transition is still ongoing.Among 141 examined Seoul speakers, these pitch changes were originally initiated by females born in the 1950s, and have almost reached completion in the speech of those born in the 1990s.

Tonogenesis

Triggers of tonogenesis

"There is tonogenetic potential in various series of phonemes: glottalized vs. plain consonants, unvoiced vs. voiced, aspirated vs. unaspirated, geminates vs. simple (...), and even among vowels".Very often, tone arises as an effect of thelossormergerof consonants. In a nontonal language,voiced consonantscommonly cause following vowels to be pronounced at a lower pitch than other consonants. That 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 previously carried (a process calledtransphonologization) and thus becomes meaningful (phonemic).

This process happened in thePunjabi language:the Punjabimurmured(voiced aspirate) consonants have disappeared and left tone in their wake. If the murmured consonant was at the beginning of a word, it left behind a low tone; at the end, it left behind a high tone. If there was no such consonant, the pitch was unaffected; however, the unaffected words are limited in pitch and did not interfere with the low and high tones. That produced a tone of its own, mid tone. The historical connection is so regular that Punjabi 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, finalfricativesor other consonants may phonetically affect the pitch of preceding vowels, and if they thenweakento[h]and finally disappear completely, the difference in pitch, now a true difference in tone, carries on in their stead.This was the case with Chinese. Two of the three tones ofMiddle Chinese,the "rising" and the "departing" tones, arose as theOld Chinesefinal consonants/ʔ/and/s/→/h/disappeared, while syllables that ended with neither of these consonants were interpreted as carrying the third tone, "even". Most varieties descending from Middle Chinese were further affected by atone splitin which each tone divided in two depending on whether the initial consonant was voiced. Vowels following a voiced consonant (depressor consonant) acquired a lower tone as the voicing lost its distinctiveness.

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 inThaiandVietnamese.

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). 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.

Stages of tonogenesis

1. The table below is the process of tonogenesis inWhite Hmong,described byMartha Ratliff.The tone values described in the table are from Christina Esposito.

Tonogenesis in White Hmong

Atonal stage	CV		CVʔ		CVh		CVCvl
Tonogenesis	CVlevel		CVrising		CVfalling		CVCvlatonal
Tone split	A1upper	A2lower	B1upper	B2lower	C1upper	C2lower	D1upper	D2lower
Current	[pɔ˦˥]	[pɔ˥˨]	[pɔ˨˦]	[pɔ˨]	[pɔ˧]	[pɔ̤˦˨]	--	[pɔ̰˨˩]

2. The table below shows theVietnamesetonogenesis.The tone values are taken from James Kirby.

Tonogenesis in Vietnamese

Atonal stage	CV		CVx > CVʔ		CVs > CVh
Tonogenesis	CVmid		CVrising		CVfalling
Tone split	A1higher	A2lower	B1higher	B2lower	C1higher	C2lower
Current	ngang/˦/	huyền/˨˩/	sắc/˨˦/	nặng/˨/	hỏi/˧˨/	ngã/˧˥/

3. The table below is the tonogenesis ofTai Dam(Black Tai). Displayed in the first row is the Proto-Southern Kra-Dai, as reconstructed by Norquest.

Tonogenesis in Tai Dam

Proto-SKD	*∅		*-h		*-ʔ		*-ʔ͡C
Tonogenesis	level		rising		falling
Tone split	A1	A2	B1	B2	C1	C2	D1	D2
Current	/˨/	/˥/	/˦˥/	/˦/	/˨˩ʔ/	/˧˩ʔ/	/˦˥/	/˦/

4. The table below shows theChinese languagetonogenesis.

Tonogenesis in Chinese

Atonal stage	-∅, -N		-ʔ		-s		-p, -t, -k
Tonogenesis	Bình píng (level)		Thượng shǎng (rising)		Đi qù (departing)		Nhập rù (entering)
Tone split	A1	A2	B1	B2	C1	C2	D1	D2

The tone values are listed below:

Tone Value of Modern Varieties of Chinese

Class	SC	TSH	THH	XMM	FZM	SZW	SXW
A1	/˥/	/˨˦/	/˥˧/	/˥/	/˦/	/˦/	/˦˩/
A2	/˧˥/	/˩/	/˥/	/˨˦/	/˥˨/	/˩˧/	/˩˥/
B1	/˨˩˦/	/˧˩/	/˨˦/	/˥˩/	/˧˩/	/˥˨/	/˥/
B2							/˨/
C1	/˥˩/	/˥˥/	/˩/	/˩/	/˨˩˧/	/˦˩˨/	/˦/
C2			/˧/	/˧/	/˨˦˨/	/˧˩/	/˧˩/
D1	/˥,˧˥ ˨˩˦,˥˩/	/˨/	/˥/	/˧˨/	/˨˧/	/˥/	/˥/
D2		/˥/	/˨/	/˥/	/˦/	/˨/	/˧˨/

1. SC=Standard Chinese(Putonghua)
2. TSH=Taiwanese Sixian Hakka
3. THH=Taiwanese Hailu Hakka
4. XMM=Xiamen Min(Amoy)
5. FZM=Fuzhou Min
6. SZW=Suzhou Wu
7. SXW=Shao xing Wu

The tones across allvarieties(ordialects) of Chinese correspond to each other, although they may not correspond to each other perfectly. Moreover, listed above are citation tones, but in actual conversations, obligatorysandhirules will reshape them. The Sixian and Hailu Hakka inTaiwanare famous for their near-regular and opposite pattern (of pitch height). Both will be compared withStandard Chinesebelow.

Word	Hailu Hakka	Standard Chinese	Sixian Hakka
Lão nhân gia 'elder people'	loLRnginHLgaHF	laoLFrenMRjiaHL (→ laoLFrenjia)	loMFnginLLgaLR
Chén công 'bowl'	vonLRgungHF	wanLFgongHL	vonMFgungLR
Nhà ga 'bus stop'	chaHFzhamLL	cheHLzhanHF	caLRzamHL
Xe đạp 'bicycle'	ciiMLhangHLchaHF	ziHFXingMRcheHL	ciiHLhangLLcaLR

1. H: high; M: mid; L: low;
2. L: level; R: rising; F: falling

5. The table below shows Punjabi tonogenesis in bisyllabic words. Unlike the above four examples, Punjab was not under the east Asian tonesprachbund,instead belonging to a separate one in its own area of Punjab. As well, unlike the above languages, which developed tone from syllable endings, Punjab developed tone from its voiced aspirated stops losing their aspiration.Tone does occur in monosyllabic words as well, but are not discussed in the chart below.

Tonogenesis in Punjabi

This table isincomplete;you can help byexpanding it.

Atonal stage	C(V)VC̬ʰ(V)V	C̬ʰ(V)VC(V)V				C(V)VC(V)V
Tonogenesis	C̬ʰ → V́C̬V̀ / V_V	C̬ʰVC(V)V		C̬ʰVVC(V)V		-
		C̬ʰ → T̥V, R̬V / #_V		C̬ʰVV → T̥VV̀, R̬VV̀ / #_VV
Result	C(V)V́C̬(V)V̀	T̥VC(V)V	R̬VC(V)V	T̥VV̀C(V)V	R̬VV̀C(V)V	C(V)VC(V)V

(C = any consonant, T = non-retroflex stop, R = retroflex stop; C̬ = voiced, C̥ = unvoiced; Cʰ = aspirated; V = Neutral tone, V́ = Rising tone, V̀ = Falling tone)

List of tonal languages

Africa

Most languages ofSub-Saharan Africaare members of theNiger-Congo family,which is predominantly tonal; notable exceptions areSwahili(in the southeast), most languages spoken in theSenegambia(among themWolof,SererandCangin languages), andFulani.The Afroasiatic languages include both tonal (Chadic,Omotic) and nontonal (Semitic,Berber,Egyptian,and mostCushitic) branches.All threeKhoisanlanguage families—Khoe,Kx'aandTuu—are tonal. Most languages of theNilo-Saharan familyare tonal.

Asia

See also:Mainland Southeast Asia linguistic area

Numerous tonal languages are widely spoken inChinaandMainland Southeast Asia.Sino-Tibetan languages(includingMeitei-Lon,Burmese,Mogand mostvarieties of Chinese;though some, such asShanghainese,are only marginally tonal) andKra–Dai languages(includingThaiandLao) are mostly tonal. TheHmong–Mien languagesare some of the most tonal languages in the world, with as many as twelve phonemically distinct tones.AustronesianandAustroasiaticlanguages are mostly non-tonal, with a number of exceptions, e.g.Vietnamese(Austroasiatic),CèmuhîandYabem(Austronesian).Tones inVietnameseandTsatmay result fromChineseinfluence on both languages. There were tones inMiddle Koreanand a few tones in Japanese.Other languages represented in the region, such asMongolianandUyghurbelong to language families that do not contain any tonality as defined here. In South Asia tonal languages are rare, but someIndo-Aryan languageshave tonality, includingPunjabi,Haryanvi,Khariboli,andDogri,as well as theEastern Bengalidialects.

America

A large number of North, South and Central American languages are tonal, including many of theAthabaskan languagesofAlaskaand theAmerican Southwest(includingNavajo),and theOto-Manguean languagesof Mexico. Among theMayan languages,which are mostly non-tonal,Yucatec(with the largest number of speakers),Uspantek,and one dialect ofTzotzilhave developed tone systems. TheTicuna languageof the western Amazon is perhaps the most tonal language of the Americas. Other languages of the western Amazon have fairly simple tone systems as well. However, although tone systems have been recorded for many American languages, little theoretical work has been completed for the characterization of their tone systems. In different cases, Oto-Manguean tone languages in Mexico have been found to possess tone systems similar to both Asian and African tone languages.

Europe

Norwegianand Swedish share tonal language features via the 'Single' and 'Double' tones, which can be marked in phonetic descriptions by either a preceding ' (single tone) or ៴ (double tone). The single tone starts low and rises to a high note (˩˦). The double tone starts higher than the single tone, falls, and then rises again to a higher pitch than the start (˨˩˦), similar to the Mandarin third tone (as in the wordnǐ,/ni˨˩˦/).

Examples in Norwegian: 'bønder (farmers) and ៴bønner (beans) are, apart from the intonation, phonetically identical (despite the spelling difference). Similarly, and with in this case identical spelling, 'tømmer (timber) and ៴tømmer (present tense of verb tømme – to empty) are distinguished only through intonation. Entire phrases can also change meaning depending on intonation, like the phrase "Hagen gror igjen" which can mean either "The garden is growing again" or "The garden is getting overgrown".

According to Watson,Scousecontrasts certain tones.

Summary

Languages that are tonal include:

• Over 50% of theSino-Tibetan languages.AllSinitic languages(most prominently, theChinese languages), someTibetic languages,including the standard languages ofTibetandBhutan,andBurmese.
• In theAustroasiaticfamily,Vietnameseand other members of theVietic languagesfamily are tonal. Other branches of this family, such asMon,Khmer,and theMunda languages,are entirely non-tonal.
• Some of theMalayo-Polynesianbranch ofAustronesian languagesinNew Caledonia(such asPaicîandCèmuhî) andNew Guinea(such asMor,Ma'yaandMatbat) plus some of theChamic languagessuch asTsatinHainanare tonal.
• The entireKra–Daifamily, spoken mainly in China, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos, and includingThaiandLao,is tonal.
• The entireHmong–Mienfamily is highly tonal.
• ManyAfroasiatic languagesin the Chadic and Omotic branches have tone systems, includingHausa.
• The vast majority ofNiger–Congo languages,such asEwe,Igbo,Lingala,Maninka,Yoruba,and theZulu,have tone systems. TheKru languagesandSouthern Mande languageshave the most complex. Notable non-tonal Niger–Congo languages areSwahili,Fula,andWolof.
• AllNilotic languagessuch as theDinka language,theMaa languages,theLuo languagesandKalenjin languageshave tone systems.
• AllKhoisan languagesin southern Africa have tone systems; some languages likeSandawehave tone systems like that of Cantonese.
• Slightly more than half of theAthabaskan languages,such asNavajo,have tone systems (languages in California and Oregon, and a few in Alaska, excluded). The Athabaskan tone languages fall into two "mirror image" groups. That is, a word which has a high tone in one language will have a cognate with a low tone in another, and vice versa.
• Iroquoian languageslikeMohawkcommonly have tone; theCherokee languagehas the most extensive tonal inventory, with six tones, of which four are contours.Here the correlation between contour tone and simple syllable structures is clearly shown; Cherokee phonotactics permit only syllables of the structure (s)(C)V.
• AllOto-Manguean languagesare tonal. In some cases, as withMixtec,tone system variations between dialects are sufficiently great to cause mutual unintelligibility.
• TheTicuna languageof the western Amazon is strongly tonal. VariousArawakan languageshave relatively basic tone systems.
• Many languages ofNew GuinealikeSianepossess register tone systems.
• Some Indo-European languages (notablySwedish,Norwegian,Lithuanian,Latvian,andSerbo-Croatian) as well as others possess what is termedpitch accent,where only the stressed syllable of a word can have different contour tones; these are not always considered to be cases of tone language. However some languages, belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European family, are tonal such asPunjabiandDogri.
  • Some English dialects, such asLiverpoolandBelfast English.
• Some European-basedcreole languages,such asKrio,SaramaccanandPapiamento,have tone from their Africansubstratumlanguages.

In some cases, it is difficult to determine whether a language is tonal. For example, theKet languageofSiberiahas 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. 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 distinctivephonation(creaky, murmured or plain vowels). It could be argued either that the tone is incidental to the phonation, in which case Burmese would not bephonemicallytonal, or that the phonation is incidental to the tone, in which case it would be considered tonal. Something similar appears to be the case with Ket.

The 19th-centuryconstructed languageSolresolcan consist of only tone, but unlike all natural tonal languages, Solresol's tone is absolute, rather than relative, and no tone sandhi occurs.

See also

• Meeussen's rule
• Musical language
• Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

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External links

• World map of tone languagesThe World Atlas of Language Structures Online
• Theory of Tone project
  • ThoT Databaseof tonal languages developed as part of the project