Tone (linguistics)

Use of pitch to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning

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 complex combination of these. Simply worded, in certain languages, the tone of a given word or syllable is used to differentiate or inflect words.

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