Tone (linguistics)

This article is about how pitch is used to distinguish words in some languages. For how pitch is used to relate emotions and attitudes in language, see Intonation (linguistics). For the styles a single speaker switches between, like formal and informal language, see Register (sociolinguistics) or Style (sociolinguistics).

The syllable ma with each of the primary tones in Standard Chinese
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In linguistics, tone is the use of pitch contour, pitch register, or both to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or to inflect words. In simple terms, a particular tone is the movement of a word or syllable's musical pitch: whether held steady, or sliding upwards or downwards, or any complex combination of these. Some scholars also classify phonation, or changes in vocal cord vibrations, under the umbrella of tone.

All spoken languages use pitch to express emotional and other para-linguistic information and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called intonation. However, certain languages—tonal languages—additionally use tones to distinguish one word from another, just as consonant and vowel sounds do in all languages. The distinctive tonal patterns of such a language are sometimes called tonemes, by analogy with phoneme. Tonal languages are common in East and Southeast Asia, Africa, the Pacific, and among indigenous people of the Americas.

Tonal languages are different from pitch-accent languages in that tonal languages typically 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.

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