Tonal Languages - Number of Tones

Number of Tones

Languages may distinguish up to five levels of pitch, though the Chori language of Nigeria is described as distinguishing six surface tone registers. Since tone contours may involve up to two shifts in pitch, there are theoretically 5 x 5 x 5 = 125 distinct tones for a language with five registers. However, the most that are actually used in a language is a tenth of that number.

Several Kam–Sui languages of southern China have nine contrastive tones, including contour tones. For example, the Kam language has 9 tones: 3 more-or-less fixed tones (high, mid and low); 4 unidirectional tones (high and low rising, high and low falling); and 2 bidirectional tones (dipping and peaking). This assumes that checked syllables are not counted as having additional tones, as they traditionally are in China: For example, in the traditional reckoning, the Kam language has 15 tones, but 6 occur only in syllables closed with /p/, /t/ or /k/ while the other 9 occur in syllables not ending in one of these sounds. Preliminary work on the Wobe language of Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire, and the Chatino languages of southern Mexico suggests that some dialects may distinguish as many as fourteen tones, but many linguists have expressed doubts, believing that many of these will turn out to be sequences of tones or prosodic effects.