Pitch-accent language

Languages

Proto-Indo-European

The theoretical proto-language Proto-Indo-European, the putative ancestor of most European, Iranian and North Indian languages, is usually reconstructed to have been a free pitch-accent system. ("Free" here refers to the position of the accent since its position was unpredictable by phonological rules and so could be on any syllable of a word, regardless of its structure.) From comparisons with the surviving Indo-European daughter languages, it is generally believed that the accented syllable was higher in pitch than the surrounding syllables. Among daughter languages, a pitch-accent system is found in Vedic Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, the Baltic languages and some South Slavic languages, although none of them preserves the original system intact.

Vedic Sanskrit

Vedic Sanskrit, the earliest form of the Indian language Sanskrit, is believed to have had a pitch accent that was very similar to that of its ancestor language Proto-Indo-European. Most words had exactly one accented syllable, but there were some unaccented words, such as finite verbs of main clauses, non-initial vocatives, and certain pronouns and particles. Occasionally, a compound word occurred with two accents: ápa-bhartávai "to take away".

The ancient Indian grammarians describe the accented syllable as being "raised" (udātta), and it appears that it was followed in the following syllable by a downwards glide, which the grammarians refer to as "sounded" (svarita). In some cases, language change merged an accented syllable with a following svarita syllable, and the two were combined in a single syllable, known as "independent svarita".

The precise descriptions of ancient Indian grammarians imply that the udātta was characterised by rising pitch and the svarita by falling pitch. In the tradition represented by the Rigveda, a collection of hymns, the highest point of the accent appears not to have been reached until the beginning of the svarita syllable. In other words, it was an example of "peak delay" (see above).

In the later stages of Sanskrit, the pitch accent was lost and a stress accent remained. The stress in Sanskrit, however, was weaker than that in English and not free but predictable. The stress was heard on the penultimate syllable of the word if it was heavy, on the antepenultimate if the antepenultimate was heavy and the penultimate light, and otherwise on the pre-antepenultimate.

Ancient Greek

In Ancient Greek, one of the final three syllables of a word carried an accent. Each syllable contained one or two vocalic morae, but only one can be accented, and accented morae were pronounced at a higher pitch. In polytonic orthography, accented vowels were marked with the acute accent. Long vowels and diphthongs are thought to have been bimoraic and, if the accent falls on the first mora, were marked with the circumflex. Long vowels and diphthongs that were accented on the first mora had a high–low (falling) pitch contour and, if accented on the second mora, may have had a low–high (rising) pitch contour:

The Ancient Greek accent was melodic, as is suggested by descriptions by ancient grammarians but also by fragments of Greek music such as the Seikilos epitaph, in which most words are set to music that coincides with the accent. For example, the first syllable of the word φαίνου (phaínou) is set to three notes rising in pitch, the middle syllable of ὀλίγον (olígon) is higher in pitch than the other two syllables, and the circumflex accent of ζῆν (zên) has two notes, the first a third higher than the second.

In addition to the two accents mentioned above (the acute and the circumflex), Ancient Greek also had a grave accent. It was used only on the last syllable of words, as an alternative to an acute. The acute was used when the word was cited in isolation or came before a pause, such as a comma or a full stop, or an enclitic. Otherwise, a grave was written. The exact interpretation of the grave is disputed: it may have indicated that the accent was completely suppressed or that it was partly suppressed but not entirely absent.

By comparing the position of the Ancient Greek and Vedic Sanskrit accents, the accent of the ancestor language Proto-Indo-European can often be reconstructed. For example, in the declension of the word for "father" in these two languages, the position of the accent in some cases is identical:

In later stages of Greek, the accent changed from a pitch accent to a stress accent, but remained largely on the same syllable as in Ancient Greek. The change is thought to have taken place by the 4th century AD. Thus, the word ἄνθρωπος (ánthrōpos) ("man, person"), which is believed to have been pronounced in ancient times with the first syllable always higher than the other two, is now pronounced with the first syllable either higher or lower than the other two.

Baltic languages

Two languages of the Baltic branch of the Indo-European family survive today: Lithuanian and Latvian. (Another Baltic language, Old Prussian, died out in the 18th century.) Both languages have a tonal accent that is believed to derive from the ancestral Proto-Indo-European language.

Baltic tones are often classified as either "acute" or "circumflex". However, these labels indicate a diachronic correspondence rather than a phonetic one. For example, the "acute" accent is falling in Lithuanian but a high level tone in Latvian and is presumed to have been rising in Old Prussian and Classical Greek. The "circumflex" is rising in Lithuanian but falling in Latvian, Prussian and Classical Greek.

In the tree diagram on the right, as adopted from Poljakov, names for (original) Baltic tones have been equated with those of modern Standard Lithuanian and the falling tone in Latvian is depicted as derived from a Baltic rising tone. According to some it was Lithuanian that "switched the places" of the Baltic tones. This might explain why most languages call a rising tone "acute" while in Baltic terminology a falling tone is "acute". Some controversy surrounds Poljakov's model, and it has been harshly criticized by Frederik Kortlandt. Kortlandt contends that broken tone in Latvian and Žemaitian is a reflex of a now disappeared glottal stop in Balto-Slavic not preserved in Aukštaitian (Standard Lithuanian) or Slavic languages and not a recent development of acute.

Lithuanian

Long segments in Lithuanian can take one of two accents: rising or falling. "Long segments" are defined as either long vowels, diphthongs or a sequence of a vowel followed by a sonorant if they are in a stressed position. Pitch can serve as the only distinguishing characteristic for minimal pairs that are otherwise orthographically identical, e.g., kar̃tų 'time:gen.pl' vs. kártų 'hang:irr.3' (rising and falling tone indicated by a tilde and an acute accent respectively.)

Latvian

In Latvian, long segments (the same criteria as in Lithuanian) can take on one of three pitches (intonācijas or more specifically zilbes intonācijas) either stiepta ("level"), lauzta ("broken") or krītoša ("falling") indicated by Latvian linguists with a tilde, circumflex or a grave accent respectively (in IPA, however, the tilde is replaced by a macron because the former is already reserved to denote nasalized vowels.) Some authors note that the level pitch is realized simply as "ultra long" (or overlong.) Endzelīns (1897) identifies "level diphthongs" as consisting of 3 moras not just two. Broken pitch is, in turn, a falling pitch with superadded glottalization. And, indeed, the similarity between the Latvian broken pitch and Danish stød has been described by several authors. At least in Danish phonology, stød (unlike Norwegian and Swedish pitch accents) is not considered a pitch accent distinction but, rather, variously described as either glottalization, laryngealization, creaky voice or vocal fry. Some authors point out that the so-called broken pitch is not a pitch accent but a pitch register distinction similar to the ngã register of Northern Vietnamese.

Outside of Central Vidzeme (Standard Latvian), the three-way system has been simplified, in Eastern Latvian (Latgale) only broken and falling pitches are distinguished. Speakers of Riga Latvian and other more westward varieties differentiate only between level and broken pitches with the falling pitch being merged with the broken one. Thus the Standard Latvian "minimal triplet" or "minimal set" of (hall), (grass) and (medicine) in Rīga Latvian would be reduced to "hall" (level pitch) and "grass" (broken pitch) and "medicine" would be pronounced with a broken pitch just like "grass". Speakers around Ērgļi tend to have just levelled pitch.

Livonian

Livonian is a Finnic language rather than Baltic but was influenced by Latvian. In the late 19th century, Danish linguist Vilhelm Thomsen identified a characteristic in the speech of a Livonian sailor that to him seemed very similar to the Danish stød. The feature was later the subject of research by several Finno-Ugricists. Although the (Indo-European) Latvian and (Uralic) Livonian are phylogenetically unrelated (being from different language families) both have influenced each other heavily in terms of phonology. Whether Livonian acquired this feature from Latvian or vice versa is debated; however, as Livonian is the only Finno-Ugric language to have this feature, the majority of researchers believe it was a product of Latvian influence on Livonian and not the other way around. It is possible that "Livonian stød" would be classified as a pitch accent only by Latvian classification just like the identical Latvian lauztā intonācija, otherwise it would be considered a pitch register, glottalization or similar categories.

Norwegian and Swedish

Norwegian and Swedish are stress-accent languages, but in addition to the stress, two-syllable words with the stress on the first syllable in most dialects also have differences in tone. There are two kinds of tonal accent, referred to as the acute and grave accents, but they are also called accent 1 and accent 2 or tone 1 and tone 2. Over 150 two-syllable word pairs are differentiated only by their use of the accent. Tone 1 is used generally for words whose second syllable is the definite article and for words that were monosyllabic in Old Norse.

For example, in most Norwegian dialects, the word bønder (farmers) is pronounced with tone 1, while tone 2 is used when pronouncing bønner (beans or prayers). Differences in spelling occasionally let readers distinguish written words, but most minimal pairs are written alike. An example in Swedish is the word anden, which means "the duck" when using tone 1 and "the spirit" when using tone 2. In some dialects of Swedish, including those spoken in Finland, the distinction is absent. There are significant variations in the realization of pitch accent between dialects. Thus, in most of western and northern Norway (the so-called high-pitch dialects), accent 1 is falling, and accent 2 is rising in the first syllable and falling in the second syllable or somewhere around the syllable boundary; but in most of eastern Norway (the so-called low-pitch dialects), accent 1 uses a low flat pitch in the first syllable, while accent 2 uses a high, sharply falling pitch in the first syllable and a low pitch in the beginning of the second syllable.

The word accents give Norwegian and Swedish a "singing" quality that makes them easy to distinguish from other languages. In Danish (except for some southern dialects), the pitch accent of Swedish and Norwegian corresponds to the glottalization phenomenon known as stød.

Rhinelandic dialects

A pitch accent is found in the following Rhinelandic languages or dialects: Limburgish, Ripuarian and Moselle Franconian (excluding Luxembourgish). They are sometimes collectively referred to as West Central German tonal languages.

In these dialects there is a distinction between two different tonal contours, known as "tonal accent 1" and "tonal accent 2". As with Lithuanian, the distinction is made only in stressed syllables and, for the most part, only when the syllable contains a long vowel or diphthong or vowel that is followed in the same syllable by a sonorant (r, l, m, n, ŋ). No distinction of tones is made in stressed syllables containing a short vowel only. Although the accentual system resembles that of Swedish, the two are thought to have arisen independently. Unlike Swedish, where the distinction in tones is not made in monosyllables (except for in northern and western dialects), in the Franconian dialects it very frequently occurs in monosyllables, e.g., (Ripuarian dialect) "sieve" vs. "she".

The tonal accents are referred to under a variety of names. Tonal accent 1 is called stoottoon ("thrusting tone") in Dutch or Schärfung in German, while tonal accent 2 is named sleeptoon ("slurring tone") in Dutch and Schleifton in German, apparently referring to the double peak it has in areas such as Limburg.

The two accents have different realisations in different dialects. For example, in Cologne, accent 1 has a sharp fall near the beginning of the syllable, and accent 2 remains level for a while before falling. In Arzbach, near Koblenz, on the other hand, accent 1 rises slightly or remains level, while it is accent 2 that falls sharply, that is, more or less the reverse of the Cologne pattern. In Hasselt in Belgian Limburg, accent 1 rises then falls, and with accent 2 there is a fall and then a rise and another fall. The three types are known as Rule A, Rule B and Rule 0, respectively. Although traditionally accent 2 has been analysed as the marked variant, in certain Rule A areas (especially Cologne, where accent 2's realization is nigh-indistinguishable from an unpitched long vowel) accent 1 is thought of as the marked variant. Grammars of the Cologne dialect will treat the pitches as "ungeschärft" (accent 2) and "geschärft" (accent 1). Adam Wrede (1958)'s influential dictionary of the Cologne dialect also treats accent 2 as indistinct; the above examples "sieve" and "she," "they" are transcribed (zeiː) and (zei) respectively; the differing transcriptions of the vowel are due to the pronunciation being different in Cologne than the surrounding dialects.

It has recently been observed that in interrogative sentences, however, all three types have nearly identical intonations. In all dialects in accent 1, there is then a rise and then a fall. In accent 2, there is then a fall, a rise and then another fall.

Since the contour of the accent changes in different contexts, from declarative to interrogative, those dialects apparently contradict Hayes (1995)'s proposed criterion for a pitch-accent language of the contour of a pitch-accent remaining stable in every context.

West South Slavic languages

The West South Slavic languages include Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian) and Slovenian, spoken in the former Yugoslavia.

The late Proto-Slavic accentual system was based on a fundamental opposition of a short/long circumflex (falling) tone, and an acute (rising) tone, the position of the accent being free as was inherited from Proto-Balto-Slavic. Common Slavic accentual innovations significantly reworked the original system primarily with respect to the position of the accent (Dybo's law, Illič-Svityč's law, Meillet's law etc.), and further developments yielded some new accents, such as the so-called neoacute (Ivšić's law), or the new rising tone in Neoštokavian dialects (the so-called "Neoštokavian retraction").

As opposed to other Slavic dialect subgroups, West South Slavic dialects have largely retained the Proto-Slavic system of free and mobile tonal accent (including the dialect used for basis of Modern Standard Slovene and the Neoštokavian dialect used for the basis of standard varieties of Serbo-Croatian: Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian), though the discrepancy between the codified norm and actual speech may vary significantly.

Serbo-Croatian

The Neoštokavian dialect used for the basis of standard Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian distinguishes four types of pitch accents: short falling (ȅ), short rising (è), long falling (ȇ), and long rising (é). There are also unaccented vowels: long (ē) and short (e). The accent is said to be relatively free, as it can be manifested on any syllable except the last. The long accents are realized by pitch change within the long vowel; the short ones are realized by the pitch difference from the subsequent syllable.

Accent alternations are very frequent in inflectional paradigms by both types of accent and placement in the word (the so-called "mobile paradigms", which were present in the PIE itself but became much more widespread in Proto-Balto-Slavic). Different inflected forms of the same lexeme can exhibit all four accents: lònac 'pot' (nominative sg.), lónca (genitive sg.), lȏnci (nominative pl.), lȍnācā (genitive pl.).

Restrictions on the distribution of the accent depend on the position of the syllable but also on its quality, as not every kind of accent is manifested in every syllable.

1. A falling tone generally occurs in monosyllabic words or the first syllable of a word (pȃs 'belt', rȏg 'horn'; bȁba 'old woman', lȃđa 'river ship'; kȕćica 'small house', Kȃrlovac). The only exception to this rule are the interjections, i.e., words uttered in the state of excitement (ahȁ, ohȏ)
2. A rising tone generally occurs in any syllable of a word except the ultimate and never in monosyllabic words (vòda 'water', lúka 'harbour'; lìvada 'meadow', lúpānje 'slam'; siròta 'female orphan', počétak 'beginning'; crvotòčina 'wormhole', oslobođénje 'liberation').

Thus, monosyllables generally have falling tone, and polysyllabic words generally have falling or rising tone on the first syllable and rising in all the other syllables except the last. The tonal opposition rising vs. falling is generally possible only in the first accented syllable of polysyllabic words, but the opposition by length, long vs. short, is possible even in the nonaccented syllable and the post-accented syllable (but not in the preaccented position).

Proclitics (clitics that latch on to a following word), on the other hand, can "steal" a falling tone (but not a rising tone) from the following monosyllabic or disyllabic words (as seen in the examples ). The stolen accent is always short and may end up being either falling or rising on the proclitic. That phenomenon is obligatory in Neoštokavian idiom and therefore in all three standard languages, but it is often lost in spoken dialects because of the influence of other dialects (such as in Zagreb because of the influence of Kajkavian dialect).

Slovenian

In Slovenian, there are two concurrent standard accentual systems: the older, tonal, with three "pitch accents", and the younger, dynamic (i.e., stress-based), with louder and longer syllables. The stress-based system was introduced because two thirds of Slovenia has lost its tonal accent. In practice, however, even the stress-based accentual system is just an abstract ideal, and speakers generally retain their own dialect even when they try to speak Standard Slovenian. For example, speakers of urban dialects in western Slovenia without distinctive length fail to introduce a quantitative opposition when they speak the standard language.

The older accentual system is tonal and free (jágoda 'strawberry', malína 'raspberry', gospodár 'master, lord'). There are three kinds of accents: short falling (è), long falling (ȇ) and long rising (é). Non-final syllables always have long accents: rakîta 'crustacea', tetíva 'sinew'. The short falling accent is always in the final syllable: bràt 'brother'. Three-way opposition among accents can only then be present: deskà 'board' : blagọ̑ 'goods, ware' : gospá 'lady'. Accent can be mobile throughout the inflectional paradigm: dȃr — darȗ, góra — gorẹ́ — goràm, bràt — bráta — o brȃtu, kráva — krȃv, vóda — vodọ̑ — na vọ̑do). The distinction is made between open -e- and -o- (either long or short) and closed -ẹ- and -ọ- (always long).

Emilian

The variety of Emilian as spoken in the city of Parma has been described as having a contrast between "simple" and "rising" pitch in accented syllables. Simple pitch originates from historical short stressed vowels, while rising pitch comes from original long vowels, which could only occur in stressed position (and are, in fact, analysed by some to be merely allophonic). In accented syllables where the vowel is followed by a coda sonorant (/l, m, n, r/) before another consonant, the vowel itself has simple pitch, but the combination of said vowel with the sonorant shows either rising or falling pitch.

An orthography was devised by University of Parma professor Guido Michelini to be able to reflect pitch in writing. Vowels with rising or falling pitch are doubled, and an accent mark (grave or acute, to indicate vowel quality) is placed on the first vowel of the two if the pitch is falling, and on the second if the pitch is rising. Vowels with simple tone are written as single, and generally bear the accent mark. To this day, however, this orthographic proposal has not enjoyed widespread use.

Certain words that have rising pitch by default show simple pitch when used as proclitics. For instance, "soóra" ("up", "on top", "upward") can be used as an adverb ("mètla soóra", "put it on top") with rising pitch, or as a preposition ("mètla sóra al dvanseèl", "put it over the windowsill").

Minimal pairs include:

• bòta /bɔ̄ta/ ("barrel"), boòta /bɔ̌ta/ ("hit, strike" n.)
• i còron /i kɔ̄rɔn/ ("they run"), i coòron /i kɔ̌rɔn/ ("the horns")
• mèj /mɛ̄j/ ("mine", feminine plural possessive pronoun), meèj /mɛ̌j/ ("never")
• i dan /i dān/ ("they give"), i daán /i dǎn/ ("the damages")

A potential minimal triplet, which could however be dismissed as simply showing a contrast in prosodic intonation, is:

• dit /dīt/ ("said", masculine sg. and pl.), diìt? /dǐt/ ("do you say?"), dìit /dît/ ("say to yourself")

Basque

The Basque language of northeastern Spain and southwestern France has a number of different dialects and a number of accentual patterns. Only western varieties seem to have a tonal accent, and eastern varieties have a stress accent (the stress-accent dialects also differ one from another). According to an analysis first suggested by J.R. Hualde, Northern Bizkaian has most nouns accentless in their absolutive singular form, but they have a default high tone (shown by underlining below), which continues throughout the word except for the first syllable. These examples come from the Guernica (Gernika) dialect:

• Gerníké "Guernica"
• basóá "forest"
• patátíé "potato"
• guntsúrrúné "kidney"

There are, however, a few nouns (often borrowings) with a lexical accent. As in Japanese, the accent consists of a high tone, followed by a low one:

• Bílbo "Bilbao"
• apáriže "supper"

In addition, some suffixes (including all plural suffixes) are preaccenting and so cause an accent on the syllable before the suffix:

• ándrak "women"
• txakúrren "of dogs" (genitive plural)
• Gerníkétik "from Guernica"

Other suffixes do not cause any extra accent:

• txakúrrén "of the dog" (genitive singular)

When a preaccenting suffix is added to an already-accented word, only the first accent is retained:

• Bílbotik "from Bilbao"

The accent from Ondarroa is similar but the accent of the word, if any, always appears on the penultimate syllable:

• Bilbótik "from Bilbao" (Ondarroa pronunciation)

Intonation studies show that when an accentless word is spoken either in isolation or before a verb, it acquires an accent on its last syllable (or, in Ondarroa, on its penultimate syllable). However, that is an intonational accent, rather than a lexical accent:

• lagúná etorri da "the friend (laguna) has come"

When an accentless word in those dialects of Basque is followed by an accented word, the automatic high tones continue in a plateau as far as the accent:

• lagúnén ámúma ikusi dot "I have seen the friend's grandmother (amúma)"

That also applies if the accent is intonational. In the following sentence, all words are unaccented apart from the intonational accent before the verb:

• lagúnén álábíá etorri da "the friend's daughter has come"

When an accented word is focused, the pitch of the accented syllable is raised, but if the word is accentless, there is no rise in pitch on that word but only on the accented word. In the following phrase, only the word amúma "grandmother" is thus accented, whether the focus is on "John", "friend", or "grandmother", or none of these:

• Jonén lágúnén ámúma "John's friend's grandmother"

Another pitch accent area in Basque is found in western Navarre, near the border with France in the towns of Goizueta and Leitza. There is a strong stress accent there on the second or the first syllable of every word, like with central dialects of Basque, but there is also a pitch contrast superimposed on the stress: mendik (rise-dip-rise) "the mountain" vs. mendik (rise-fall) "the mountains".

Turkish

Although the Turkish accent is traditionally referred to as "stress", recent studies have pointed out that the main correlate of lexical accent is actually pitch. In a word like sözcükle "with a word", the accented second syllable is thus higher than the other two but has less intensity (loudness).

Turkish word-accent is found especially in geographical names (İstanbul, Ankara, Yunanistan "Greece", Adana), foreign borrowings (salata "salad", lokanta "restaurant"), some proper names (Erdoğan, Kenedi), compound words (başkent "capital city"), some words referring to relatives (anne "mother"), and certain adverbs (şimdi "now", yalnız "only"). It is also caused by certain suffixes, some of which are "pre-accenting" and so cause an accent on the syllable preceding them, such as negative -me-/-ma-, question particle mi?, or copula -dir "it is" (gelmedi "he did not come", geldi mi? "did he come?", güzeldir "it is beautiful"). The accented syllable is slightly higher in pitch than the following syllable. All other words, when pronounced in isolation, either have a slightly raised pitch on the final syllable or are pronounced with all the syllables level.

Turkish also has a phrase-accent and focus-accent. An accent on the first word of a phrase usually causes an accent in the following words or suffixes to be neutralised, e.g., çoban salatası "shepherd salad", Ankara'dan da "also from Ankara", telefon ettiler "they telephoned", with only one accent.

A controversy exists over whether Turkish has accentless words, like Japanese and Basque. Some scholars, such as Levi (2005) and Özçelik (2016), see the final raised pitch sometimes heard in words such as arkadaş ("friend") or geldi ("he came") as a mere phrasal tone or boundary tone. Others, such as Kabak (2016), prefer the traditional view that the final accent in such words is a kind of stress.

Persian

The accent of Persian words used to be always referred to as "stress" but is recognised as a pitch accent in recent works. Acoustic studies show that accented syllables have some of the characteristics of stressed syllables in stress-accent languages (slightly more intensity, more length, more open vowels), but that effect is much less than would normally be expected in stress-accent languages. The main difference is one of pitch, with a contour of (L)+H*.

Normally, the pitch falls again at the end of the syllable (if final) or on the next syllable.

Persian nouns and adjectives are always accented on the final syllable. Certain suffixes, such as the plural -ha, shift the accent to themselves:

• ketâb "book"
• ketâb-hâ "books"
• ketâb-i "bookish"

Other suffixes, such as possessives and the indefinite -i, are clitic and so are unaccented:

• ketâb-etun "your book"
• ketâb-i "a book"

In verbs, the personal endings in the past tense are clitic but are accented in the future tense:

• gereft-am "I took"
• gerefte-am "I have taken"
• xâham gereft "I will take"

When prefixes are added, the accent shifts to the first syllable:

• mi-gir-am "I'm taking"
• na-gereft-am "I did not take"
• be-gir-am "I should take"

In the vocative (xânom! "madam") and sometimes elsewhere, such as bale! "yes" or agar "if", the accent is also on the first syllable.

In compound verbs, the accent is on the first element:

• kâr kard-am "I worked"

However, in compound nouns, the accent is on the second element:

• ketâb-xâne "bookcase"

In the ezâfe construction, the first noun is optionally accented but generally loses its pitch:

• mardom-e Irân / mardom-e Irân "the people of Iran"

When a word is focussed, the pitch is raised, and the words that follow usually lose their accent:

• nâme-ye mâmân-am bud ru miz "it was my mom's letter that was on the table"

However, other researchers claim that the pitch of post-focus words is reduced but sometimes still audible.

Japanese

Standard Japanese and certain other varieties of Japanese are described as having a pitch accent, which differs significantly among dialects. In Standard Japanese, the "accent" may be characterized as a downstep rather than as pitch accent. The pitch of a word rises until it reaches a downstep and then drops abruptly. In a two-syllable word, a contrast thus occurs between high–low and low–high. Accentless words are also low–high, but the pitch of following enclitics differentiates them.

The Osaka accent (Kansai dialect) (marked red on the map to the right) differs from the Tokyo accent in that in some words, the first syllable of the word (always low in Tokyo Japanese unless accented) can be high. To give a full description of the accent of a word, therefore, it is necessary to specify not only the position of the accent (downstep) but also the height of the first syllable.

Korean

Standard (Seoul) Korean does not have pitch-accent. However, several other dialects retain a Middle Korean pitch-accent system.

In the dialect of North Gyeongsang, in southeastern South Korea, any syllable and the initial two syllables may have a pitch accent in the form of a high tone. For example, in trisyllabic words, there are four possible tone patterns:

Shanghainese

The Shanghai dialect of Wu Chinese is marginally tonal, with characteristics of a pitch accent.

Not counting closed syllables (those with a final glottal stop), a monosyllabic Shanghainese may carry one of three tones: high, mid, low. The tones have a contour in isolation, but for the following purposes, it can be ignored. However, low tone always occurs after voiced consonants and only then. Thus, the only tonal distinction is after voiceless consonants and in vowel-initial syllables, and there is only a two-way distinction between high tone and mid tone.

In a polysyllabic word, the tone of the first syllable determines the tone of the entire word. If the first tone is high, the following syllables are mid. If it is either mid or low and not closed, the second syllable is high, and any following syllables are mid. If it is low and closed, the following syllables are mid. Thus, a mark for the high tone is all that is needed to note the tone in Shanghainese:

Bantu languages

The Bantu languages are a large group of about 550 languages, spread over most of southern and central Africa. Proto-Bantu is believed to have had two tones: H and L. It does not appear to have had a pitch-accent system, as defined above, since words with such forms as HL, HH, LH, and LL were all found: *káda "charcoal", *cómbá "fish", *nyangá "horn" and *tope "mud". In other words, words like *cómbá could have two high tones, while others had one tone or none.

However, over time, processes such as Meeussen's rule, by which sequences such as HHH became HLL, LHL, or LLH, tended to eliminate all but one tone in a word in many Bantu languages, making them more accent-like. Thus in Chichewa, the word for "fish" (nsómba) now has HL tones, exactly like the word for "charcoal" (khála).

Another process that makes for culminativity in some Bantu languages is the interaction between stress and tone. The penultimate syllable of a word is stressed in many Bantu languages, and some of them tend to have high tones on the penultimate syllable. For example, in Chitumbuka, every phonological phrase is accented with a falling tone on the penultimate: ti-ku-phika sî:ma "we are cooking porridge". In other languages, such as Xhosa, the high tone is attracted to the antepenultimate although the penultimate being stressed.

Ciluba and Ruund, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are two Bantu languages that are interesting for their "tone reversal". Low tone is phonologically active in places that other languages of the same family have a high tone. Thus, in a word like *mukíla "tail", most other Bantu languages have a high tone on the second syllable, but Chiluba has mukìla and Ruund has mukìl, with a low-toned accent.

Luganda

Luganda, a language of Uganda, has some words with apparent tonal accents. They can be either high or falling (rising tones do not occur in Luganda). Falling tones are found on bimoraic syllables or word-finally:

• ensî "country"
• ekibúga "city"
• eddwâliro "hospital"

Some words, however, have two accents, which are joined in a plateau:

• Kámpálâ "Kampala"

Other words are accentless:

• ekitabo "book"

However, accentless words are not always without tones but usually receive a default tone on all syllables except the first one or the first mora:

• ekítábó "book"
• Bunyóró "Bunyoro" (name of region)

A double consonant at the beginning of a word counts as a mora. In such words, the first syllable also can have a default tone:

• Ttóró "Toro" (a region)

Default tones are also heard on the end of accented words if there is a gap of at least one mora after the accent (the default tones are lower in pitch than the preceding accent):

• amasérengétá "south"
• eddwâlíró "hospital"

The default tones are not always heard but disappear in certain contexts, such as if a noun is the subject of a sentence or used before a numeral:

• Mbarara kibúga "Mbarara is a city"
• ebitabo kkúmi "ten books"

In some contexts, such as affirmative verb + location, or phrases with "of"), the high tone of an accent (or of a default tone) can continue in a plateau until the next accented syllable:

• mu maséréngétá gá Úgáńda "in the south of Uganda"
• alí mú Búgáńda "he is in Buganda"

However, the situation with verbs is more complicated since some verbal roots have inherent word accent, and the prefixes added to the verb often have an accent. Also, some tenses (such as negative and relative clause tenses) add an accent to the final syllable.

When two or three accents appear in a row in a verb, H-H becomes H-L, and H-H-H becomes H-L-L. However, the default tones are not added on the syllables with deleted accents, which leads to forms like bálilabá (from *bá-lí-lába) "they will see". There, not one but two low-toned syllables follow the accent.

Another rule is that if two accents in the same verb are not next to each other, they form a plateau. Thus, the negative tense tágulâ "he does not buy" is pronounced tágúlâ, with a plateau.

Chichewa

Chichewa, a language widely spoken in Malawi, is tonal but has accentual properties. Most Chichewa simple nouns have only one high tone, usually on one of the last three syllables. (See Chichewa tones.)

• chímanga "maize"
• chikóndi "love"
• chinangwá "cassava" (usually pronounced chinăngwā, with rising tone on the penultimate)

However, many number of nouns have no high tone but are accentless. Unlike the accentless words in Luganda, however, they do not acquire any default tones but are pronounced with all the syllables low:

• chipatala "hospital"

A few nouns (often but not always compounds) have two high tones. If they are separated by only one syllable, they usually join in a plateau:

• chizólówezí "habit"
• bírímánkhwe "chameleon"

Most verbal roots in Chichewa are accentless. However, a few verbs also have lexical accents, but they are not inherited from Proto-Bantu. When there is an accent, it is always heard on the final -a of the verb:

• thokozá-ni "give thanks (pl.)"

Prefixes and suffixes add some accents. For example, the infinitive prefix ku- is postaccenting, adding a tone on the following syllable, while the suffix -nso "again/also" is preaccenting:

• fotokoza "explain" (toneless)
• kufótokoza "to explain"
• kufótokozánso "to explain again"

The verbal system is complicated because overlying the verb's tones and suffixes is a series of tonal patterns that changes by tense. There are at least eight patterns for affirmative tenses and other patterns for relative clauses and negative verbs.

For example, the present habitual tense has tones on the first and penultimate syllables, the recent past has a tone after the tense-marker -na-, the subjunctive has a tone on the final syllable and the potential is toneless. The tones apply, with minor variations, to all verbs, whether the stem is long or short:

• ndímafotokóza "I (usually) explain"
• ndinafótokoza "I explained (just now)"
• ndifotokozé "I should explain"
• ndingafotokoze "I could explain"

Most other tones tend to be suppressed when a verb has a penultimate accent. For example, in the negative future, both the tone of the future-tense marker, -dzá-, and the tone of the negative marker, sí- (both normally high), are neutralised:

• sindidzafotokóza "I will not explain"

Those and other processes cause most verb tenses to have only one or two high tones, which are at the beginning, the penultimate or the final of the verb stem or at a prefix or sometimes even both. That gives the impression that the tones in the resultant words are clearly accentuated.

English

Most dialects of English are classified as stress-accent languages. However, there are some dialects in which tone can play a part in the word accent.

Hong Kong English

Lexical words in Hong Kong English are assigned at least one H (high) tone. Disyllabic words may have the tone pattern H-o (clóckwise), H-H (sómetímes), o-H (creáte), where "o" stands for tonelessness. Trisyllabic words receive any one of seven possible tone assignments H-H-H (kángároo), H-H-o (hándwríting), H-o-H (róundabóut), H-o-o (thréátening), o-H-H (abóut-túrn), o-H-o (esséntial), o-o-H (recomménd). Toneless syllables receive other pitch assignments depending on their positions: word-initial toneless syllables are M(id)-toned, utterance-final toneless syllables are Low, and word-medial toneless syllables vary across two major sub-dialects in the community surfacing as either H or M. Because lexical stipulation of Hong Kong English tones are {H, o} privative, one is easily misled into thinking of Hong Kong English as a pitch-accented language. It is, however, probably more accurate to think of Hong Kong English as a language with lexical tones.

South African English

In Broad South African English, (phonetically ) is often deleted, such as in word-initial stressed syllables (as in house), but at least as often, it is pronounced even if it seems to be deleted. The vowel that follows in the word-initial syllable often carries a low or low rising tone. In rapid speech, that can be the only trace of the deleted . Potentially minimal tonal pairs are thus created, like oh (neutral or high falling ) vs. hoe (low or low rising ).

Welsh

In Welsh a stress accent usually comes on the penultimate syllable (with a few exceptions accented on the final, such as the word Cymraeg "Welsh"), and is usually on a low pitch followed by a rising pitch. "In Welsh, the stressed syllable is associated with lower pitch than less stressed or unstressed syllables ... However, the post-stress syllable in Welsh is typically produced on a higher pitch." It is believed that this came about because late Brythonic (the ancestor of Welsh) had a penultimate accent that was pronounced with a high pitch. When the final vowels of words were lost, the high pitch remained on what was now the final syllable, but the stress moved to the new penultimate. Thus LHL changed to LH, with the stress on the low syllable.

Although it is usually said that the high pitch is in the final syllable of the word, an acoustic study of Anglesey Welsh found that in that dialect at least the peak of the tone was actually in the penultimate syllable, thus the last two syllables were L+H* L.

Scottish Gaelic

Several northern dialects of Scottish Gaelic, such as those of Lewis, Wester Ross and Strathnaver, feature pitch accents which derive from vowel hiatus. For instance, the words bò "cow" and bodha "reef" are a minimal pair, but the former is pronounced with a level or rising tone, as , and the latter with a falling tone beginning rising or high, as . A similar tonal contrast is found in ostensibly disyllabic words. Scottish Gaelic has a phenomenon of epenthesis whereby certain consonant clusters (see here for a full list) feature a repeating, equally stressed vowel, creating a second syllable whose vowel is considered a unit with, or echo of, the first. This can be seen in the minimal pair falbh "to leave", pronounced with a rising tone across the word and both syllables equally stressed, and falamh "empty", pronounced with a rising tone followed by a falling one.

Ternes claimed that Scottish Gaelic is inherently a pitch-accent language, which manifests in the dialects of Argyll as glottalisation akin to stød.

Yaqui

The Yaqui are a native American people living mostly in Mexico but also in Arizona. About 17,000 people are said to speak Yaqui, which is a Uto-Aztecan language.

Yaqui has a tonal accent in which the accent is on the first or the second mora of the word. A long vowel has two moras in Yaqui, and a short vowel or diphthong has one mora. After the accent, the high tone continues with a very slight decline until the end of the word.

About two thirds of words have an accent on the first mora, and all tones of the word are then high:

• kárí "house"
• hamút "woman"
• tééká "sky" (where ee represents a long vowel)
• teéká "lay down"

In some words with a long first vowel, the accent moves to the second syllable, and the vowel of the first syllable then becomes short:

• bákót "snake"
• bakóttá "snake (object of verb)"

In a certain kind of reduplication, the accent moves to the first mora, and the next consonant is then usually doubled. At the same time, since a long vowel cannot follow the accent, the vowel after the accent is also shortened:

• teéká "lay down"
• téttéká "in the process of laying something down"

At the end of a phrase, the pitch drops, with a low boundary tone.

To an English-speaker, the first high tone in Yaqui "sounds very much like a stress". However, acoustic studies show that the amplitude of the accented syllable is not really greater than the other syllables in the word are.

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