Article published In:
Studies in LanguageVol. 25:3 (2001) ► pp.423–462
A typology of contour tone restrictions
This paper presents results of a survey of contour tones in 105 languages with lexical tone. Results indicate an implicational hierarchy of tone bearing ability, whereby long vowels are most likely to carry contour tones, followed by syllables containing a short vowel plus a sonorant coda, followed by syllables containing a short vowel plus an obstruent coda, followed by open syllables containing a short vowel. It is claimed that this tonal hierarchy is phonetically motivated: syllable types which are phonetically better suited to carrying tonal information are more likely to support contour tones. Languages whose tone distributions superficially appear to fall outside the range of variation predicted on phonetic grounds are demonstrated, upon closer examination, to be unexceptional in their behavior.
Cited by
Cited by 34 other publications
Akinbo, Samuel Kayode & Michael Bulkaam
2024. Iconicity as the motivation for the signification and locality of deictic grammatical tones in Tal. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 9:1 
Bakšienė, Rima, Agnė Čepaitienė, Jurgita Jaroslavienė & Jolita Urbanavičienė
2023. Standard Lithuanian. Journal of the International Phonetic Association ► pp. 1 ff.
Ciszewski, Tomasz
2011. Word and Foot Minimality in English: A Metrical Government Analysis. In New Perspectives in Language, Discourse and Translation Studies [Second Language Learning and Teaching, ], ► pp. 25 ff.
Ciszewski, Tomasz
2013. Quantitative Intervocalic Relations: Evidence for Foot Structure. In Teaching and Researching English Accents in Native and Non-native Speakers [Second Language Learning and Teaching, ], ► pp. 161 ff.
DiCanio, Christian T.
2009. The phonetics of register in Takhian Thong Chong. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 39:2 ► pp. 162 ff.
Esposito, Christina M.
2012. An acoustic and electroglottographic study of White Hmong tone and phonation. Journal of Phonetics 40:3 ► pp. 466 ff.
Franich, Kathryn
2018. Tonal and morphophonological effects on the location of perceptual centers (p-centers): Evidence from a Bantu language. Journal of Phonetics 67 ► pp. 21 ff.
Franich, Kathryn H. & Ange B. Lendja Ngnemzué
2021. Feeling the Beat in an African Tone Language: Rhythmic Mapping Between Language and Music. Frontiers in Communication 6
Gordon, Matthew
2007. Typology in Optimality Theory. Language and Linguistics Compass 1:6 ► pp. 750 ff.
Gordon, Matthew K.
2017. Phonetic and Phonological Research on Native American Languages: Past, Present, and Future. International Journal of American Linguistics 83:1 ► pp. 79 ff.
Hanssen, Judith, Jörg Peters & Carlos Gussenhoven
2022. Responses to time pressure on phrase-final melodies in varieties of Dutch and West Frisian. Journal of Phonetics 93 ► pp. 101150 ff.
Hyman, Larry M.
2014. Coda constraints on tone. In The Form of Structure, the Structure of Form [Language Faculty and Beyond, 12], ► pp. 103 ff.
Järvikivi, Juhani, Martti Vainio, Daniel Aalto & James Holland Jones
2010. Real-Time Correlates of Phonological Quantity Reveal Unity of Tonal and Non-Tonal Languages. PLoS ONE 5:9 ► pp. e12603 ff.
Köhnlein, Björn
2015. The complex durational relationship of contour tones and level tones. Diachronica 32:2 ► pp. 231 ff.
Lee-Kim, Sang-Im
2021. Stop Laryngeal Distinctions Driven by Contrastive Effects of Neighboring Tones. Language and Speech 64:1 ► pp. 98 ff.
Mbah, Boniface & Evelyn Mbah
2015. Tonal government in Igbo syntax. Language Sciences 50 ► pp. 49 ff.
Mortensen, David R. & Jordan Picone
Myers, Scott
2020. An Acoustic Study of Sandhi Vowel Hiatus in Luganda. Language and Speech 63:3 ► pp. 506 ff.
Myers, Scott
2021. Erratum to: “F0 timing in Luganda: Effects of phrase position and tone category” [J. Phonet. 85 (2021) 101027]. Journal of Phonetics 87 ► pp. 101079 ff.
Myers, Scott
2021. F0 timing in Luganda: Effects of phrase position and gone category. Journal of Phonetics 85 ► pp. 101027 ff.
Myers, Scott, Saudah Namyalo & Anatole Kiriggwajjo
2019. F0Timing and Tone Contrasts in Luganda. Phonetica 76:1 ► pp. 55 ff.
Pittayaporn, Pittayawat
2018. Chapter 17. Quantitative and qualitative restrictions on the distribution of lexical tones in Thai. In Topics in Theoretical Asian Linguistics [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 250], ► pp. 371 ff.
Rathcke, Tamara V.
2017. How Truncating Are ‘Truncating Languages'? Evidence from Russian and German. Phonetica 73:3-4 ► pp. 194 ff.
Shaw, Jason A. & Michael D. Tyler
2020. Effects of vowel coproduction on the timecourse of tone recognition. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 147:4 ► pp. 2511 ff.
Shih, Stephanie S & Sharon Inkelas
2019. Autosegmental Aims in Surface-Optimizing Phonology. Linguistic Inquiry 50:1 ► pp. 137 ff.
Tilsen, Sam
2016. Selection and coordination: The articulatory basis for the emergence of phonological structure. Journal of Phonetics 55 ► pp. 53 ff.
Tilsen, Sam & Ramesh Balasubramaniam
2013. A Dynamical Model of Hierarchical Selection and Coordination in Speech Planning. PLoS ONE 8:4 ► pp. e62800 ff.
van der Hulst, Harry
2017. Phonological Typology. In The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Typology, ► pp. 39 ff.
Xu, Yi
2009. Timing and coordination in tone and intonation—An articulatory-functional perspective. Lingua 119:6 ► pp. 906 ff.
Yu, Alan C. L.
2007. A Natural History of Infixation,
Yu, Alan C. L.
2011. Mergers and Neutralization. In The Blackwell Companion to Phonology, ► pp. 1 ff.
Yu, Alan C. L.
2023. Tonal context influences tone-duration interaction: Evidence from Cantonese. JASA Express Letters 3:3
Zhang, Hang
2016. Dissimilation in the second language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones. Second Language Research 32:3 ► pp. 427 ff.
[no author supplied]
2011. References. In The Handbook of Phonological Theory, ► pp. 779 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.