Features of tonal systems
Feature name Label Section Languages Values
TBU (Tone Bearing Unit) TBU 2. Prosodic units 13 mora / syllable
Language has a prosodic foot FOOT 2. Prosodic units 13 no / yes
Does prosodic foot play a role in establishing boundaries of tonal spans? FTSPAN 2. Prosodic units 10 no / yes
Number of tonal levels NUMTL 3. Tonal inventory 12 2 / 3 / 4 / 5
Which tonal levels are present TL 3. Tonal inventory 12 H L / H M L / H M L xL / xH H M L xL
Downdrift DOWNDRIFT 3. Tonal inventory 10 no / yes
Non-automatic downstep DOWNSTEP 3. Tonal inventory 10 no / yes
Number of tonemes NUMTON 3. Tonal inventory 11 1 / 2 / 3 / 6
Minimal tonal span size (in TBUs) MINTSPAN 4. Tonotactics 11 0.0 / 0.5 / 1.0
Maximal tonal span size (in TBUs) MAXTSPAN 4. Tonotactics 11 2.0 / 3.0 / 4.0 / inf
Tonal span prototypically coincides with what unit? TD 4. Tonotactics 11 foot / mora / none / syllable / word
Which boundaries can appear inside a tonal span TSPANBND 4. Tonotactics 12 mora syllable morpheme / mora syllable morpheme word / syllable / syllable foot morpheme word / syllable morpheme / syllable morpheme word
Superficially toneless syllables EXTONSYL 4. Tonotactics 11 no / yes
How toneless syllables are tonalized TNMETHOD 4. Tonotactics 6 obtains a default tone (which is not a toneme) / other / tonalized through polarization
Toneless morphemes TLESSMORPH 4. Tonotactics 11 no / yes
Default tonal level TLDEFAULT 4. Tonotactics 3 L / M
Culminativity CULM 5. Stress and tone 12 no / yes
Obligatority OBLIG 5. Stress and tone 12 no / yes
Stress STRESS 5. Stress and tone 12 no / yes
Is tonal span position predictable given the position of the stress? STRESSTS 5. Stress and tone 3 no / yes
Grammatical tonal morphemes GRAMTONE 7. Grammatical and Lexical Tones 12 no / yes
Floating grammatical tones FLOATGRAM 7. Grammatical and Lexical Tones 9 no / yes
Tonal morphemes that combine a segment with a tonal operation outside of the segment TSEGGRAM 7. Grammatical and Lexical Tones 9 no / yes
Tonal morphemes that contain more than one toneme MULTGRAM 7. Grammatical and Lexical Tones 10 no / yes
Number of grammatical tonal morphemes NGRAM 7. Grammatical and Lexical Tones 10 0 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 7 / 20 / 37 / 50
Grammatical meanings expressed with tonal morphemes GRAMMEAN 7. Grammatical and Lexical Tones 9 inflectional / inflectional derivational / inflectional derivational syntactic
Grammatical tones are realized on words of the following parts of speech GRAMPOS 7. Grammatical and Lexical Tones 9 noun verb / noun verb adjective / noun verb adjective pronoun adverb other / noun verb adjective pronoun auxiliary / noun verb adjective pronoun numeral / verb
Lexical tone LEXTONE 7. Grammatical and Lexical Tones 4 yes
Lexical categories that lack lexical tone CATNOLEXT 7. Grammatical and Lexical Tones 1 randomly distributed across lexicon
Parts of speech that lack lexcial tone POSNOLEXT 7. Grammatical and Lexical Tones 1 other
Distribution of tonemes depend on word classes TNMDIST 7. Grammatical and Lexical Tones 12 no / yes
Tones marked in orthography ORTHO 8. Miscellaneous 13 tonal information is present indirectly / tones marked / tones not marked / tones partially marked / unwritten language
Macroarea AREA 8. Miscellaneous 30 Africa / Eurasia / North America / Papunesia / South America