Tone
Many dialects of Limburgish (and of Ripuarian) have a pitch accent, having two different accents used in stressed syllables. The difference between these two accents is used for differentiating both various grammatical forms of a single lexeme and minimal tone pairs one from the other. With specific regards to Limburgish, these two accents are traditionally known as sjtoettoen ("push tone") and sjleiptoen ("dragging tone"). The dragging tone is lexical while the push tone is not. For example, daa~g with a dragging tone means "a day" in Limburgish, while in many Limburgish dialects daa\g with a push tone is the plural form, "days" (in addition, can also be articulated in a neutral tone as a third possibility. In this case, it means "be good").
This difference is grammatical, but not lexical. An example of a lexical difference caused by dragging tone is the word bie\ which is articulated with a push tone and means "bee", forming a tonal minimal pair with bie~, which is articulated with a dragging tone and means "at".
Read more about this topic: Limburgish Language
Famous quotes containing the word tone:
“It hurts me to hear the tone in which the poor are condemned as “shiftless,” or “having a pauper spirit,” just as it would if a crowd mocked at a child for its weakness, or laughed at a lame man because he could not run, or a blind man because he stumbled.”
—Albion Fellows Bacon (1865–1933)
“Eloquence resides as much in the tone of voice, in the eyes, and in the expression of the face, as in the choice of words.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Whose are the truly labored sentences? From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and literary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, the simple record of the month’s labor in the farmer’s almanac, to restore our tone and spirits.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)