First Published in 2002. Part of the Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics series, this is an in-depth investigation of the effects of duration and sonority on contour tone distribution. The term "tone language" usually refers to languages in which the pitch of a syllable serves lexical or grammatical functions. In some tone languages, the contrastive functions of pitch are sometimes played by pitch changes within a syllable. Pitch changes of this kind are called contour tones. The distribution of contour tones in a language, are when under what phonological contexts contour tones are more readily realized.

Acknowledgments, 1 Background, 2 The Phonetics of Contour Tones, 3 Empirical Predictions of Different Approaches, 4 The Role of Contrast-Specific Phonetics in Contour Tone Distribution: A Survey, 5 The Role of Language-Specific Phonetics in Contour Tone Distribution: Instrumental Studies, 6 Against Structure-Only Alternatives, 7 A Phonetically-Driven Optimality-Theoretic Approach, 8 Case Studies, 9 Conclusion, Appendix: Data Sources for Languages in the Survey, References, Index