phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds or, in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians ...

, contour describes

speech sound In phonetics (a branch of linguistics), a phone is any distinct speech sound. It is any surface-level or unanalyzed sound of a language, the smallest identifiable unit occurring inside a stream of speech. In spoken human language, a phone is thus ...

s that behave as single segments but make an internal transition from one quality, place, or manner to another. Such sounds may be tones,

vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...

s, or

consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...

s. Many tone languages have '' contour tones'', which move from one level to another. For example,

Mandarin Chinese Mandarin ( ; zh, s=, t=, p=Guānhuà, l=Mandarin (bureaucrat), officials' speech) is the largest branch of the Sinitic languages. Mandarin varieties are spoken by 70 percent of all Chinese speakers over a large geographical area that stretch ...

has four lexical tones. The high tone is level, without contour; the falling tone is a contour from high pitch to low; the rising tone a contour from mid pitch to high, and, when spoken in isolation, the low tone takes on a dipping contour, mid to low and then to high pitch. They are transcribed with series of either

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

s or tone letters, which with proper font support fuse into an iconic shape: . In the case of vowels, the terms ''

diphthong A diphthong ( ), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of ...

'' and '' triphthong'' are used instead of 'contour'. They are vowels that glide from one

place of articulation In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is an approximate location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a pa ...

to another, as in English ''boy'' and ''bow.'' They are officially transcribed with a non-syllabic sign under one of the vowel letters: , . However, when there is no chance of confusion, the diacritic is often omitted for simplicity. The most common contour consonants are by far the ''

affricate An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pai ...

s'', such as English ''ch'' and ''j.'' They start out as one manner, a stop, and release into a different manner, a

fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...

, but behave as single consonants: , . Other types of transition are attested in consonants, such as '' prenasalized stops'' in many African languages and ''

nasal release In phonetics, a nasal release is the release of a stop consonant into a nasal. Such sounds are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with superscript nasal letters, for example as in English ''catnip'' . In English words such as ''s ...

'' in

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...

, the

retroflex trill The voiced retroflex trill is not a single consonant quality, but a sliding cluster sound within the time of a single segment. It has been reported in Toda and confirmed with laboratory measurements. Peter Ladefoged transcribes it with the IPA ...

of Toda, the trilled affricate of Fijian, voicing contours , in ǃXóõ,Miller (2003) believes that !Xoo is phonemically breathy-voiced and that the devoicing is because of a wider glottis than is the case in, for example, Hindustani. The nature of the voiced ejectives is unclear. and even click contours ( airstream contours) in

Khoisan languages The Khoisan languages ( ; also Khoesan or Khoesaan) are a number of Languages of Africa, African languages once classified together, originally by Joseph Greenberg. Khoisan is defined as those languages that have click languages, click consonant ...

such as Nǁng, which start with a lingual (velaric) airstream mechanism and release with either a pulmonic mechanism ('' linguo-pulmonic'' clicks such as , ) or an ejective mechanism ('' linguo-glottalic'' clicks such as , ).

References

{{Reflist Phonology

See also

References