Tone

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1 (also sound) In acoustic phonetics, term for occurrence of sounds with simple, period waves.

2 (also intonation²) Phenomena of pitch that refer to morphologically defined segments (morphs, words) to the extent that different pitches in a language are distinctive. Such languages are known as tonal languages.

In phonology, the term ‘toneme’ (in analogy to ‘phoneme’) is used to denote phonetically distinctive tones. A five-level notational system is used to indicate tones, with 1 for the lowest and 5 for the highest tones. These are written as subscripts following the syllable they affect. Punu, a Miao-Yao language, has eight distinctive tones: cu₃₃ ‘together,’ cu₂₂ ‘the last of all,’ cu₁₂ ‘bridge,’ cu₄₃ ‘wine, alcohol,’ cu₄₂ ‘order,’ cu₃₁ ‘hook,’ cu₂₁ ‘just,’ cu₂₃₁ ‘drought.’

phonetics, tonology

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