Theory of Tone – European Research Council Advanced project

More than 40% of all the languages of the world are tonal.

Tonal languages use pitch to encode lexical and/or grammatical meanings.

The aim of the project is to systematically describe the diversity of the tonal systems of the languages of the world. The project will accumulate comprehensive data on the role of tones in phonological systems of the world’s languages: structure of tonal systems, functional load of tone (expressed in the terms of tonal density) in each particular language system, role of tone in distinguishing lexical and/or grammatical meanings.

Toneme

A toneme is a meaningful tone, i.e. a tone which can (potentially) distinguish lexical and/or grammatical meanings.

The notion of toneme occupies a central place in the theoretical approach adopted in this project.

This project is based at the Institut nationale des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO, Paris). The project team is located at LLACAN (CNRS, UMR-8135). The project is funded by the ERC Advanced grant to Valentin Vydrin.