He was the first phonetician to produce, in his " Sechuana Reader ", a competent description of an African tone language, including the concept of downstep.
12.
After high level and high rising tones, the neutral syllable has an independent pitch that looks like a mid-register tonethe default tone in most register-tone languages.
13.
Clear examples of the usefulness of autosegmental analysis came in early work from the detailed study of African tone languages, as well as the study of vowel and nasal harmony systems.
14.
Zapotec is a tone language, which means that the meaning of a word is often determined by voice pitch ( tonemes ), essential for understanding the meaning of different words.
15.
Pitch accent languages differ from tone languages in that pitch accents are only assigned to one syllable in a word, whereas tones can be assigned to multiple syllables in a word.
16.
Only in limited locations ( South Africa, New Guinea, Mexico, Brazil and a few others ) are tone languages occurring as individual members or small clusters within a non-tone dominated area.
17.
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.
18.
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.
19.
It is possible that African level-tone languages such as Mambila, with four may be better suited to study the role of absolute pitch in speech than the pitch and contour tone languages of East Asia.
20.
It has also been found that, among music conservatory students, the prevalence of absolute pitch is much higher for speakers of tone language, even controlling for ethnic background, showing that language influences how musical tones are perceived.
