Contour (linguistics)

In phonetics, contour describes speech sounds which behave as single segments, but which make an internal transition from one quality, place, or manner to another. These sounds may be tones, vowels, or consonants.

Many tone languages have contour tones, which move from one level to another. For example, Mandarin Chinese 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. These are transcribed with series of either diacritics or tone letters, which with proper font support fuse into an iconic shape: [ma˨˩˦].

In the case of vowels, the word diphthong is used instead of 'contour'. These are vowels that glide from one place of articulation to another, as in English boy and bow. These are officially transcribed with a non-syllabic sign under one of the vowel letters: [bɔɪ̯], [baʊ̯], though when there is no chance of confusion, the diacritic is often left off for simplicity.

Contour

Contour may refer to:

Contours may refer to:

Contouring may refer to:

Other uses

See also