Tonogenesis

Use of pitch to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article needs more citations. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.Find sources: "Tone" linguistics – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article's style of writing may not reflect the encyclopedic tone used on Wikipedia. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions. (July 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message) Six tones of Vietnamese The syllable ma with each of the primary tones in Standard Mandarin Chinese , / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. In linguistics, tone is a language's use of pitch contour, pitch register, or both to distinguish words' meanings or to serve a grammatical purpose. A particular tone is a musical pitch and its movement: whether held steady, or sliding upwards or downwards, or any compl