Downstep

In phonetics, downstep is a phonemic or phonetic downward shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal language. It is best known in the tonal languages of West Africa, but the pitch accent of Japanese (a non-tonal language) is quite similar to downstep in Africa. Downstep contrasts with the much rarer upstep. The symbol for downstep in the International Phonetic Alphabet is a superscript down arrow, ꜜ (↓). It is common to see a superscript exclamation mark, ꜝ (!), used instead due to typographic constraints.