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Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. [1] .
Tone, in linguistics, a variation in the pitch of the voice while speaking. The word tone is usually applied to those languages (called tone languages) in which pitch serves to help distinguish words and grammatical categories—i.e., in which pitch characteristics are used to differentiate one word.
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Apr 25, 2023 · When the phonological form of a morpheme consistently gives rise to a specific pattern of fundamental frequency (f0), this morpheme is specified for tone. Languages in which such morphemes are found are referred to as tone languages, even if the extent of this specification is limited.
Nov 11, 2021 · This chapter surveys issues related to the production of tone in the world’s languages. Here the term ‘tone’ refers to the localised (within-syllable) use of fundamental frequency that contrasts lexical meanings (thus excluding pitch accent and stress languages).
- Pitch
- Tone Notation
- Tone as A Phonemic Property
- More Tones
- Contour Tones
- Intonation
- References
During voicing, the vocal folds vibrate at some rate, which is normally called the fundamental frequency (typically abbreviated f0 or F0) when talking specifically about the actual physical vibration and pitch when talking about our auditory perception of that vibration. For the purposes of this discussion, we will use the term pitch, since we are ...
Many tone languages have only two tones, normally identified as a high tone (often abbreviated as H) and a low tone (often abbreviated as L). High tones have a higher pitch (with the vocal folds vibrating faster), and low tones have a lower pitch (with the vocal folds vibrating slower). Note that there is no single consistent rate of vibration for ...
In many tone languages, each syllable can in principle have its own independent tone, as in the various tone patterns seen in the Bemba words in Table 3.3. Here, we see that the first syllable of a word could have either a high tone, as in [βúːlá] ‘take’, or a low tone, as in [ùkúwà] ‘fall’. Then, regardless of what tone the first syllable has...
One of the ways that tones can be more complex is that they are often not simply binary, with just a high versus low distinction. Many tone languages have a mid tone (M) that is intermediate between high and low, such as Igala, a Yoruboid language of the Niger-Congo family, spoken in Nigeria, which has minimal triplets like those in Table 3.4, whic...
So far, we have only looked at level tones (high, mid, low), which have relatively stable pitch from beginning to end. However, many tone languages also have contour tones, which change in pitch during the course of the syllable. For example, Awa (a Kainantu-Goroka language of the Trans-New Guinea family, spoken in Papua New Guinea) has two level t...
Finally, we can also see changes in pitch over entire sentences as intonation, with the purpose of conveying information about the function of the sentences rather than information of which word is being used. For example, the English sentence this is vegetarian chilihas many different possible intonation patterns, as in the examples in sentences...
Hamann, Silke and Nancy C. Kula. 2015. Bemba. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 45(1): 61–68. Loving, Rochard E. 1966. Awa phonemes, tonemes, and tonally differentiated allomorphs. Papers in New Guinea LinguisticsA-7: 23–32. Welmers, William E. 1973. African language structures. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Pre...
Jun 27, 2024 · Tone and Intonation are two types of pitch variation, which are used by speakers of all languages in order to give shape to utterances. More specifically, tone encodes segments and morphemes, and intonation gives utterances a further discoursal meaning that is independent of the meanings of the words themselves.
1. Introduction. On numerous occasions I have been asked, “How does one study a tone language?” Or: “How can I tell if my language is tonal?” Even seasoned field researchers, upon confronting their first tone system, have asked me: “How do I figure out the number of tones I have?”
