What Is Tone Language And What Does It Do In Linguistics

Tone Language is a sound in which frequency and pitch is used for symbolize within words. Each tone has order of frequency. It should be distinguished from the intonation. Different tone units have a distinctive function, for example, intonation, formation and stress relate to the different tone functions.

Tone Language is a sound

Mostly time tone is found in vowels, but there are languages ​​where this role can perform and consonants, often in sonnets.The linguist Kenneth Pike introduced the distinction between language and register with the tone. In some languages ​​of the world, such as China and other Asian language, the tone is distinctive, that allows distinguishing. There are many Languages ​​in Europe that have a distinctive tone.

Tones and accents

Some languages ​​use tones to distinguish words. One of the best known examples is Mandarin Chinese, which has four tones. For example, sī (with a high tone) means “thinking”, so (with a falling tone) means “four” and sǐ (in a tone that starts and ends ascending, descending) means “death.” The tonal languages ​​are common in East Asia (other Chinese languages, Burmese, Thai and Vietnamese, among others), but also are found in Africa (Yoruba) and the Americas (Navajo).

The languages ​​that do not have tones, they usually have the accent (a syllable pronounced with more force than the other). In some languages, the accent always falls on the same syllable (the first in Hungarian, the last accent is important and is used to distinguish words in French), but in other languages.

Benefits of Tone Language You Must Know

The pitch is in all languages ​​is an important part of communication. In Mandarin Chinese, however, the emphasis may change the meaning of a word completely. “Ma” with a uniform stress means “mother”, “ma” with a first falling and then rising emphasis is “horse”.

The researchers have studied the relationship between humidity and the importance of pitch to about 3750 languages ​​from different language families. Therefore tonal languages ​​actually come from dry areas.

According to the Research:

The average tone is (nearly) flat, and often syllable changes the pitch only insignificantly.

The deep tone is also almost unchanged over the duration of the syllable.

The high tone starts at a higher level and then rises still further.

The rising tone starts deeper, falls a little, and then rose sharply.

The falling tone starts at a higher level, rising slightly, to then fall sharply.

by Abdullah Sam
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