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Tone

Specialty Definition: Tone

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Specialty Definition: Dual-tone multi-frequency

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF), also known as touch tone is used for telephone signaling over the line in the voice frequency band to the call switching center. DTMF is an example of a MFSK system. Today DTMF is used for most call setup to the telephone exchange, at least in the Western world, and trunk signalling is now done out of band using the SS7 signaling system. The trunk signalling tones were different than the tones known as touch tone with a triangular matrix being used rather than a square matrix. See: blue box for more details on the switching tones.

Prior to DTMF the phone systems had used a series of clicks on the phone line to dial numbers, a system known as pulse dialing. The clicks were actually the connection of the phone line being made and broken, like flicking a light switch on and off. This was useful only as far as the local end office where the wires stopped, requiring operator intervention for long distance dialing.

DTMF was developed at Bell Labs in order to allow dialing signals to dial long-distance numbers, potentially over non-wire links such as microwave links or satellites. Encoder/decoders were added at the end offices that would convert the standard pulse dialing clicks into DTMF tones and play them down the line to the remote end office. At the remote site another encoder/decoder would decode the tones and turn out a series of clicks. It was as if you were connected directly to that end office, yet the signaling would work over any sort of link. This idea of using the existing network for signaling as well as the message is known as in-band signaling.

It was clear even in the late 1950s when DTMF was being developed that the future of switching lay in electronic switches, as opposed to the mechanical crossbar systems currently in use. In this case pulse dialing made no sense at any point in the circuit, and plans were made to roll DTMF out to end users as soon as possible. Various tests of the system occurred throughout the 1960s where DTMF became known as Touch Tone.

The Touch Tone system also introduced a standardized keyboard layout. After testing 18 different layouts, they eventually chose the one familiar to us today, with 1 in the upper-left and 0 at the bottom. The adding-machine layout, with 1 in the lower-left was also tried, but at that time few people used adding machines, and having the 1 at the "start" (in European language reading order) led to fewer typing errors. In retrospect, many people consider that this was a mistake. With the widespread introduction of computers and bank machines, the phone keyboard has become "oddball", causing mistakes.

The engineers had also envisioned phones being used to access computers, and surveyed a number of companies to see what they would need for this role. This led to the addition of the pound (#) and star (*) keys, as well as a group of keys for menu selection, A, B, C and D. In the end the lettered keys were dropped from most phones, and it was many years before the # and * keys became widely used. Many non-telephone applications still use the alphabet keys, such as Amateur Radio repeater signaling and control.

The US military also used the letters, relabled, in their Autovon phone system. Here they were used before dialing the phone in order to give some calls priority, cutting in over existing calls if need be. The idea was to allow important traffic to get through every time. Pressing C, Immediate, before dialing would make the switch first look for any free lines, and if all lines were in use, it would hang up any non-priority calls, and then any Priority calls. While the Autovon phone system no longer exists, their original names were Flash Override (A), Flash (B), Immediate (C), and Priority (D). Pressing one of these keys gave your call priority, over-riding other conversations on the network. Flash Override is the highest priority.

Present-day uses of the A, B, C and D keys on telephone networks are few, and exclusive to network control. For example, the A key is used on some networks to cycle through different carriers at will (thereby listening in on calls). Their use is probably prohibited by most carriers.

The DTMF keypad is laid out in a 4 x 4 matrix with each row representing a low frequency, and each column representing a high frequency. Pressing a single key such as '1' will send a sinusoidal tone of the two frequencies 697 and 1209 hertz (Hz). The two tones are the reason for calling it multi-frequency. These tones are then decoded by the switching center in order to determine which key was pressed.

DTMF Keypad Frequencies

1	2	3	A	697 Hz
4	5	6	B	770 Hz
7	8	9	C	852 Hz
*	0	#	D	941 Hz
1209 Hz	1336 Hz	1477 Hz	1633 Hz

The frequencies were initially designed with a ratio of 21/19, which is slightly less than a whole tone, to avoid harmonics or natural occurring frequencies that could occur when the two tones are sent. The frequencies may not vary more that +/- 1.5% from their nominal frequency, or the switching center will ignore the signal. The high frequencies may be the same volume or louder as the low frequencies when sent across the line. The loudness difference between the high and low frequencies can be as large as 3 decibels (dB) and is referred to as twist.

DTMF can be regarded as a simple form of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing.

Synonyms include multifrequency pulsing and multifrequency signaling.

See also: Pulse dialing

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Dual-tone multi-frequency."

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Interval (music)

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

In music theory, an interval is the difference in pitch between two notes.

When speaking of notes in the chromatic scale, it is normal to use names such as "major third", "perfect fifth" and "augmented fourth". When speaking of other scales, however, or when talking about two pitches without the context of a scale, such names are often meaningless. Some such intervals have names of their own.

It is also possible to measure the size of the interval between any two notes by using the logarithmic measure of centss. 1200 cents are equal to an octave, and an equally tempered semitone is equal to 100 cents.

Basic intervals: whole tone and semitone

A semitone, (also called half tone or half step), is the smallest interval in Western musical tuning. It corresponds to the difference between two adjacent keys on a piano, or between two frets on a guitar.

In terms of pitch, it is equal to a frequency ratio of 2^1/12 in equal temperament, 256/243 in Pythagorean tuning, (3/2)^1/7 in perfect fifth tuning, and various rational numbers, such as 16/15, in just intonation.

A whole tone (also called tone or whole step) is equal to two semitones in equal temparament, where it is 2^1/6. It is 9/8 in Pythagorean tuning, (9/4)^1/7 in fifth tuning, and either 9/8 (major tone) or 10/9 (minor tone) in just intonation, depending on the note in the scale.

Intervals in the chromatic scale

Intervals are named after the number of notes they span in the diatonic scale. The names are inclusive of the two notes being considered; for example the interval between a C and a G is a fifth (C,D,E,F,G is a distance of 5 notes). In addition to the number of tones between notes, the nature of the interval can also be described. In a major scale, intervals starting from the tonic can be perfect or major. A Unison is the interval between a note and itself (meaning normally just one note heard.)

Fig 1. Intervals in the C major scale

In minor scales the minor interval is introduced:

Fig 2. Intervals in the C minor melodic scale

Fig 3. Intervals in the C minor harmonic scale

Compound intervals

When an interval exceeds an octave, it is called a compound interval. For example, a note a 10th above the tonic in a major scale is known as a 'compound major third.'

Concordant and discordant intervals

Concordant intervals usually sound "right". Discordant intervals jar, and can sound as if one of the notes wants to move up or down (called a resolution; this is the basis of suspensions.) Concordant intervals include all perfect intervals (4ths, 5ths, 8ves) and a few imperfect intervals, namely major and minor 3rds and 6ths; all other intervals are called discordant intervals, including 2nds, 7ths, and augmented or diminished notes.

Modifying intervals

It is possible to modify intervals. Naming follows these rules:

• If the bottom note of a perfect or major interval is lowered a semitone (or the top note is raised), the interval has been augmented.
• If the bottom note of a perfect or minor interval is raised a semitone (or the top note is lowered), the interval becomes diminished.
• If the bottom note of a minor interval is lowered a semitone, the interval becomes major.
• If the bottom note of a major interval is raised a semitone, the interval becomes minor.

Modified intervals often have more than one name. For example, a minor 7th can also be written as an augmented 6th. These are called enharmonic intervals. Typically names with 'minor' or 'major' in them are preferred, so the more correct way to write the interval given in the example is 'minor 7th.' The primary exception to this being in the case of a diminished 7th, which has a specific function within a full diminished 7th chord.

The interval of augmentation and diminishment is a semitone only in modern equal temperament, where a semitone is exactly half a tone. More generally it is a tone less a semitone. An interval is augmented by changing one its semitones into a tone. Also this means that an augmented 6th is not generally equal to a minor 7th. This is only true in modern music.

Other intervals

There are also a number of intervals not found in the chromatic scale which have names of their own. These intervals describe small discrepancies between notes tuned according to just intonation:

• A Pythagorean comma is the difference between twelve justly tuned perfect fifths and seven octaves. It is expressed by the frequency ratio 531441:524288, and is equal to 23.46 centss
• A syntonic comma is the difference between four justly tuned perfect fifths and two octaves plus a major third. It is expressed by the ratio 81:80, and is equal to 21.51 cents
• Diesis is generally used to mean the difference between three justly tuned major thirds and one octave. It is expressed by the ratio 128:125, and is equal to 41.06 cents. However, it has been used to mean other small intervals: see diesis for details
• A schisma is the difference between five octaves and eight justly tuned fifths plus one justly tuned major third. It is expressed by the ratio 32805:32768, and is equal to 1.95 cents. It is also the difference between the Pythagorean and a syntonic commas.

A number of cultures around the world who do not use the chromatic scale have their own names for intervals found in their music.

For the mathematical use of the word "interval", see interval (mathematics).

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Interval (music)."

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Pitch (music)

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

In music, pitch refers to the perception of the frequency of a note. For example, the A above middle C is nowadays set at 440 hertz (often written as "A=440 Hz", and known as concert pitch), although this has not always been the case (see #Historical pitch standards). However, the phrase "pitch difference" is sometimes used to mean frequency ratio. It must be noted that pitch is something we perceive. A slight change in frequency need not mean a change in pitch but a change in pitch implies a change in frequency. Like other human stimuli, the perception of pitch also can be explained by the Weber-Fechner Law.

The relative pitches of individual notes in a scale may be determined by one of a number of tuning systems. In the west, the twelve-note chromatic scale is the most common method of organisation, with equal temperament now the most widely used method of tuning that scale. In it, the pitch ratio between any two successive notes of the scale is exactly the twelfth root of two. In well-tempered systems (as used in the time of Johann Sebastian Bach, for example), different methods of musical tuning were used. Almost all of these systems have one interval in common, the octave, where the pitch of one note is double the frequency of another. For example, if the A above middle C is 440 Hz, the A an octave above that will be 880 Hz.

Like other senses, the relative perception of pitch can be fooled, resulting in "audio illusions". There are several of these, such as the tritone paradox, but most notably the Shepard scale, where a continuous or discrete sequence of specially formed tones can be made to sound like this sequence continues ascending forever, when this in fact is a clever audio illusion.

Historical pitch standards

As well as various systems of musical tuning being used to determine the relative frequency of notes in a scale, various pitch standards have been used historically to fix the absolute position of the scale. In 1955, the International Organization for Standardization fixed the frequency of the A above middle C at 440 Hz, but in the past, various frequencies have been used.

Until the 19th century, there was no concerted effort to standardize musical pitch and the levels across Europe varied widely. Even within one church, the pitch used could vary over time because of the way organss were tuned. Generally, the end of an organ pipe would be hammered inwards to a cone, or flared outwards to raise or lower the pitch. When the pipe ends became frayed by this constant process, they were all trimmed down, thus raising the overall pitch of the organ.

Some idea of the variance in pitches can be gained by examining old tuning forks, organ pipes and other sources. For example, an English pitchpipe from 1720 plays the A above middle C at 380 Hz, while the organss played by Johann Sebastian Bach in Hamburg, Leipzig and Weimar were pitched at A=480 Hz, a difference of around four semitones. In other words, the A produced by the 1720 pitchpipe would have been at the same frequency as the F on one of Bach's organs.

Pitch levels did not just vary from place to place, or over time - pitch levels could vary even within the same city. The pitch used for an English cathedral organ in the 17th century for example, could be as much as five semitones lower than that used for a domestic keyboard instrument in the same city.

The need to standardize pitch levels, at least within one city or country, rose as performance of music which combined the organ with instrumental ensembles became more popular. One way in which pitch could be controlled was with the use of tuning forks, although even here there was variation - a tuning fork associated with Handel, dating from 1740, is pitched at A=422.5 Hz, while a later one from 1780 is pitched at A=409 Hz, almost a semitone lower. Nonetheless, there was a tendency towards the end of the 18th century for the frequency of the A above middle C to be in the range of 400 to 450 Hz.

Throughout the first half of the 19th century, there was a tendency for the pitch used by orchestras to rise. This was probably largely due to orchestras competing with each other, each attempting to fill increasingly large concert halls with a brighter, more "brilliant", sound than that of their rivals. They were helped in this endeavour by the improved durability of the violins' E-strings - in the 16th century, Michael Praetorius had rejected various high pitch standards as leading to snapped strings, but the new strings could take the higher tension without breaking.

The rise in pitch at this time can be seen reflected in tuning forks. A 1815 tuning fork from the Dresden opera house gives A=423.2 Hz, while one of eleven years later from the same opera house gives A=435 Hz. At La Scala in Milan, the A above middle C rose as high as 451 Hz.

The most vocal opponents of the upward tendency in pitch were singers, who complained that it was putting a strain on their voices. Largely due to their protestations, the French government passed a law on February 16, 1859 which set the A above middle C at 435 Hz. This was the first attempt to standardize pitch on such a scale, and was known as the diapason normal. It became quite a popular pitch standard outside of France as well.

There were still variations, however. The diapason normal resulted in middle C being tuned at approximately 258.65 Hz. An alternative pitch standard known as philosophical or scientific pitch, which fixed middle C at exactly 256 Hz (that is, 2⁸ Hz), and resulted in the A above it being tuned to approximately 430.54 Hz, gained some popularity due to its mathematical convenience (the frequencies of all the Cs being a power of two). This never received the same official recognition as A=435, however, and was not as widely used.

In 1939, an international conference recommended that the A above middle C be tuned to 440 Hz. This standard was taken up by the International Organization for Standardization in 1955 (and was reaffirmed by them in 1975) as ISO 16. The difference between this and the diapason normal is due to confusion over which temperature the French standard should be measured at. The initial standard was A=439 Hz, but this was superseded by A=440 Hz after complaints that 439 Hz was difficult to reproduce in a laboratory owing to 439 being a prime number.

Despite such confusion, A=440 Hz is now used virtually world wide, at least in theory. In practice, as orchestras still tune to a note given out by the oboe, rather than to an electronic tuning device (which would be more reliable), and as the oboist himself may not have used such a device to tune in the first place, there is still some variance in the exact pitch used. Solo instruments such as the piano (which an orchestra may tune to if they are playing together) are also not universally tuned to A=440 Hz. Overall, it is thought that the general trend since the middle of the 20th century has been for standard pitch to rise, though it has certainly been rising far more slowly than it has in the past..

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Pitch (music)."

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Theobald Wolfe Tone

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Theobald Wolfe Tone, commonly known as Wolfe Tone (20 June 1763 - 19 November 1798) was a leading figure in the Irish independence movement.

The son of Peter Tone, a coachmaker, he was born in Dublin. His grandfather was a small farmer in county Kildare, and his mother was the daughter of a captain in the merchant service. Though entered as a student at Trinity College, Dublin, Tone gave little attention to study, his inclination being for a military career; but after eloping with Matilda Witherington, a girl of sixteen, he took his degree in 1786, and read law in London at the Middle Temple and afterwards in Dublin, being called to the Irish bar in 1789.

Disappointed at finding no notice taken of a wild scheme for founding a military colony in the South Seas which he had submitted to William Pitt the Younger, Tone turned to Irish politics. An able pamphlet attacking the administration of the marquess of Buckingham in 1790 brought him to the notice of the Whig club; and in September 1791 he wrote a remarkable essay over the signature " A Northern Whig," of which 10,000 copies are said to have been sold. The principles of the French Revolution were at this time being eagerly embraced in Ireland, especially among the Presbyterians of Ulster, and two months before the appearance of Tone's essay a meeting had been held in Belfast, where republican toasts had been drunk with enthusiasm, and a resolution in favour of the abolition of religious disqualifications had given the first sign of political sympathy between the Roman Catholics and the Protestant dissenters of the north. The essay of " A Northern Whig " emphasized the growing breach between the Whig patriots like Henry Flood and Henry Grattan, who aimed at Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform without disloyalty to the connection with England, and the men who desired to establish a separate Irish republic. Tone expressed contempt for the constitution which Grattan had so triumphantly extorted from the British government in 1782; and, himself a Protestant, he urged co-operation between the different religious sects in Ireland as the only means of obtaining complete redress of Irish grievances.

In October 1791 Tone converted these ideas into practical policy by founding, in conjunction with Thomas Russell (1767-1803), Napper Tandy and others, the society of the "United Irishmen". The original purpose of this society was no more than the formation of a political union between Roman Catholics and Protestants, with a view to obtaining a liberal measure of parliamentary reform; it was only when that object appeared to be unattainable by constitutional methods that the majority of the members adopted the more uncompromising opinions which Wolfe Tone held from the first, and conspired to establish an Irish republic by armed rebellion. Tone himself admitted that with him hatred of England had always been "rather an instinct than a principle", though until his views should become more generally accepted in Ireland he was prepared to work for reform as distinguished from revolution. But he wanted to root out the popular respect for the names of Charlemont and Grattan, transferring the leadership to more militant campaigners. Grattan was a reformer and a patriot without democratic ideas; Wolfe Tone was a revolutionary whose principles were drawn from the French Convention. Grattan's political philosophy was allied to that of Edmund Burke; Tone was a disciple of Georges Danton and Thomas Paine.

Democratic principles were gaining ground among the Roman Catholics as well as among the Presbyterians. A quarrel between the moderate and the more advanced sections of the Roman Catholic Committee led, in December 1791, to the secession of sixty-eight of the former, led by Lord Kenmare; and the direction of the committee then passed to more violent leaders, of whom the most prominent was John Keogh, a Dublin tradesman. The active participation of the Roman Catholics in the movement of the United Irishmen was strengthened by the appointment of Tone as paid secretary of the Roman Catholic Committee in the spring of 1792. When the legality of the Roman Catholic Convention in 1792 was questioned by the government, Tone drew up for the committee a statement of the case on which a favourable opinion of counsel was obtained; and a sum of £1500 with a gold medal was voted to Tone by the Convention when it dissolved itself in April 1793. Burke and Grattan were anxious that provision should be made for the education of Irish Roman Catholic priests at home, to preserve them from the contagion of Jacobinism in France; Wolfe Tone, "with an incomparably juster forecast", as Lecky observes, "advocated the same measure for exactly opposite reasons". He rejoiced that the breaking up of the French schools by the revolution had rendered necessary the foundation of Maynooth College, which he foresaw would draw the sympathies of the clergy into more democratic channels. In 1794 the United Irishmen, persuaded that their scheme of universal suffrage and equal electoral districts was not likely to be accepted by any party in the Irish parliament, began to found their hopes on a French invasion. An English clergyman named William Jackson, a man of infamous notoriety who had long lived in France, where he had imbibed revolutionary opinions, came to Ireland to negotiate between the French committee of public safety and the United Irishmen. For this emissary Tone drew up a memorandum on the state of Ireland, which he described as ripe for revolution; the paper was betrayed to the government by an attorney named Cockayne to whom Jackson had imprudently disclosed his mission; and in April 1794 Jackson was arrested on a charge of treason.

Several of the leading United Irishmen, including Reynolds and Hamilton Rowan, immediately fled the country; the papers of the United Irishmen were seized, and for a time the organisation was broken up. Tone, who had not attended meetings of the society since May 1793, remained in Ireland till after the trial and suicide of Jackson in April 1795. Having friends among the government party, including members of the Beresford family, he was able to make terms with the government, and in return for information as to what had passed between Jackson, Rowan and himself he was permitted to emigrate to the United States of America, where he arrived in May 1795. Living at Philadelphia, he wrote a few months later to Thomas Russell expressing unqualified dislike of the American people, whom he was disappointed to find no more truly democratic in sentiment and no less attached to order and authority than the English; he described George Washington as a "high-flying aristocrat", and he found the aristocracy of money in America still less to his liking than the European aristocracy of birth.

Tone did not feel himself bound by his agreement with the British government to abstain from further conspiracy; and finding himself at Philadelphia in the company of Reynolds, Rowan and Napper Tandy, he went to Paris to persuade the French government to send an expedition to invade Ireland. In February 1796 he arrived in Paris and had interviews with De La Croix and Carnot, who were impressed by his energy, sincerity and ability. A commission was given him as adjutant-general in the French army, which he hoped might protect him from the penalty of treason in the event of capture by the English; though he himself claimed the authorship of a proclamation said to have been issued by the United Irishmen, enjoining that all Irishmen taken with arms in their hands in the British service should be instantly shot; and he supported a project for landing a thousand criminals in England, who were to be commissioned to burn Bristol and commit other atrocities. He drew up two memorials representing that the landing of a considerable French force in Ireland would be followed by a general rising of the people, and giving a detailed account of the condition of the country.

The French Directory, which possessed information from Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Arthur O'Connor confirming Tone, prepared to despatch an expedition. under Louis Lazare Hoche. On 15 December 1796 the expedition, consisting of forty-three sail and carrying about 14,000 men with a large supply of war material for distribution in Ireland, sailed from Brest. Tone, who accompanied it as "Adjutant-general Smith," had the greatest contempt for the seamanship of the French sailors, which was amply justified by the disastrous result of the invasion. Returning to France without having effected anything, Tone served for some months in the French army under Hoche; and in June 1797 he took part in preparations for a Dutch expedition to Ireland, which was to be supported by the French. But the Dutch fleet was detained in the Texel for many weeks by unfavourable weather, and before it eventually put to sea in October, only to be crushed by Duncan in the battle of Camperdown, Tone had returned to Paris; and Hoche, the chief hope of the United Irishmen, was dead. Napoleon Bonaparte, with whom Tone had several interviews about this time, was much less disposed than Hoche had been to undertake in earnest an Irish expedition; and when the rebellion broke out in Ireland in 1798 he had started for Egypt. When, therefore, Tone urged the Directory to send effective assistance to the Irish rebels, all that could be promised was a number of small raids to descend simultaneously on different points of the Irish coast. One of these under General Humbert succeeded in landing a force in Killala Bay, and gained some success in Connaught before it was subdued by Lake and Charles Cornwallis, Wolfe Tone's brother Matthew being captured, tried by court-martial, and hanged; a second raid, accompanied by Napper Tandy, came to disaster on the coast of Donegal; while Wolfe Tone took part in a third, under Admiral Bompard, with General Hardy in command of a force of about 3000 men, which encountered an English squadron near Lough Swilly on 12 October 1798. Tone, who was on board the Hoche, refused Bompard's offer of escape in a frigate before the action, and was taken prisoner when the Hoche was forced to surrender.

When the prisoners were landed a fortnight later Sir George Hill recognized Tone in the French adjutant-general's uniform. At his trial by court-martial in Dublin, Tone made a speech avowing his determined hostility to England and his intention "by fair and open war to procure the separation of the Two countries", and pleading in virtue of his status as a French officer to die by the musket instead of the rope. He was, however, sentenced to be hanged on 12 November 1798; but he cut his throat with a penknife, and died of the wound several days later.

Although Wolfe Tone had none of the attributes of greatness, "he rises", says Lecky, "far above the dreary level of commonplace which Irish conspiracy in general presents. The tawdry and exaggerated rhetoric; the petty vanity and jealousies; the weak sentimentalism; the utter incapacity for proportioning means to ends, and for grasping the stern realities of things, which so commonly disfigure the lives and conduct even of the more honest members of his class, were wholly alien to his nature. His judgment of men and things was keen, lucid and masculine, and be was alike prompt in decision and brave in action."

In his later years he overcame the drunkenness that was habitual to him in youth; he developed seriousness of character and unselfish devotion to what he believed was the cause of patriotism; and he won the respect of men of high character and capacity in France and Holland. His journals, which were written for his family and intimate friends, give a singularly interesting and vivid picture of life in Paris in the time of the directory. They were published after his death by his son, William Theobald Wolfe Tone (1791 - 1828), who was educated by the French government and served with some distinction in the armies of Napoleon, emigrating after Waterloo to America, where he died, in New York City, on 10 October 1828.

See Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone by himself, continued by his son, with his political writings, edited by W. T. Wolfe Tone (2 volumes., Washington, 1826), another edition of which is entitled Autobiography of Theobald Wolfe Tone, edited with introduction by R. Barry O'Brien (2 vols., London, 1893); R. R. Madden, Lives of the United Irishmen (7 vols., London, 1842); Alfred Webb, Compendium of Irish Biography (Dublin, 1878); W. E. H. Lecky, History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, vols. iii., iv., v. (cabinet ed., 5 vols., London, 1892).

Original text from http://1911encyclopedia.org

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Theobald Wolfe Tone."

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Tonal language

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

A tonal language or tone language is one in which changes in pitch lead to changes in word meaning. Perhaps the best-known examples are Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese, but in fact, many unrelated languages are tonal. Some language groups that contain tonal languages include Sino-Tibetan (to which the Chinese languages belong), Austro-Asiatic (which include Thai and Vietnamese), the Indo-Aryan (which includes Punjabi), the Bantu languages (most languages in Sub-Saharan Africa are Bantu) and the Khoisan languages. Many other languages use tone to convey grammatical structure or emphasis (see phonology), but this does not make them tonal languages in this sense.

To illustrate how tone can affect meaning, let us look at the following example from Mandarin Chinese, which has five tones:

• 1 is a long, high level tone.
• 2 starts at normal pitch and rises to the pitch of tone 1.
• 3 is a low tone, dipping down briefly before slowly rising to the starting level of tone 2.
• 4 is a sharply falling tone, starting at the height of tone 1 and falling to somewhere below tone 2's onset.
• . (dot) or 0 is a neutral tone, with no specific contour; the actual pitch expressed is directly influenced by the tones of the preceding and following syllables.

These tones can lead to one syllable, "ma" having five meanings, depending on the tone associated with it, so that "ma1 ma0" glosses as "mother", "ma2" as "hemp", "ma3" as "horse", "ma4" as "scold", and "ma0" at the end of a sentence acts as an interrogative particle. This differentiation in tone allows a speaker to create the (not entirely grammatical) sentence "ma1 ma0 ma4 ma3 de0 ma2 ma0?", or "Is Mother scolding the horse's hemp?" (Māma mà mǎ de má ma? 妈妈骂马的麻吗？), where the series of "ma"s are differentiated in meaning only by their tone.

Tones can interact in complex ways through a process known as tone sandhi.

Tonal languages fall into two broad categories: register and contour systems. Mandarin Chinese and its close relatives have contour systems, where differences are made not based on absolute pitch, but on shifts in relative pitch in a word. Register systems are found in Bantu languages, which more typically seem to have 2 or 3 tones with specific relative pitches assigned to them, with a high tone and a low tone being the most common (plus a middle tone for languages that have a third pitch).

Please note that the word "pitch" is used loosely here, to refer to the comparative "difference" between a high pitch and a low pitch from one syllable to the next, rather than a contrast of absolute pitches such as one finds in music. As a result, when one combines tone with sentence contours, the musical pitch of a high tone at the beginning of a question may actually be lower than the musical pitch of a low-tone word at the end of the question, because the "average" pitch between the high and low tones rises (and falls) along with the overall pitch contour of the sentence.

Tonal languages and music

It has been suggested that speakers of tonal languages are more likely to have absolute pitch than speakers of non-tonal languages.

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Tonal language."

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Tone

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The word tone is used in several different fields with different meanings.

Alternate meanings

• Pitch (music) - the frequency of a note or sound
• Interval (music)#Basic intervals:whole tone and semitone - the difference in pitch between two notes
• River Tone - a river in England

Commonly used in discussing

• Tonal languages
• phonology - voice
• musical instruments
• tonality in music
• Dual-tone multi-frequency or tone dialing (as opposed to pulse dialing)

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Tone."

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Voice

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

The word voice has many definitions:

• The sound made by a person using the vocal folds for talking and singing (singers use the voice as an instrument for creating music). The tone of voice may show that a sentence is a question, even if it grammatically is not, and shows emotions such as anger, surprise, happiness; in a request the tone reveals much about how much one wants something, and whether it is asking a favor or more like an order; the tone of saying e.g. "I am sorry" says a lot: it may vary from begging for forgiveness to "I have the right to do this even if you do not like it".
• A section of a choir or other musical ensemble that sings or plays the same part.
• The tone of a piece of writing, influenced by its point of view.
• In phonetics and phonology, a phone or phoneme is said to be voiced if it is produced with the vocal folds vibrating. See voice (phonetics).
• In grammar, voice is a verb-form that indicates the relationship between the subject and the action expressed by the verb. See grammatical voice

See also

• vocal loading
• voice analysis
• voice disorders

External links

• DICT Development Group entry on "voice"

  Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Voice."

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Abbreviations & Acronyms: Tone

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Synonyms within Context: Tone

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Modern Usage: Tone

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Commercial Usage: Tone

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Image Slideshow: Tone

Illustrations: Tone More pictures...

Computer Images: Tone More pictures...

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Photo Album: Tone

Thumbnail	Description & Credit	Thumbnail	Description & Credit
	Six week old infant with botulism, which is evident as a marked loss of muscle tone, especially in the region of the head and neck. Credit: CDC.		The pilot tone antennas for the GOES satellites. Credit: NOAA in Space.
	Elevating the tone of Pignapoke. Credit: Library of Congress.		What are you doing here? demanded Mabel, in the tone of a lady-in-the-bath intruded upon by the plumber. Credit: Library of Congress.
	Liam Mellowes : a great Fenian who saw the poor as the freedom force of the nation, as Tone did : shot by firing squad, Mountjoy jail, Dec. 8, 1922. Credit: Library of Congress.
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits.

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Digital Photo Gallery: Tone
 

"Tone bar" by Emmanuel Rivet Commentary: "Steel bar for lap guitar - Ben Harper uses this sort of bar ;-)."	"First Rose - Sepia" by Anthony Hall Commentary: "This was my first attempt using camera at close range. But in sepia tone."
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers.

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Sounds Captioned with "Tone".

Play	Caption	Play	Caption
	Arpeggiated electric guitar with synthesizer flute melody and tone drums.		Man chanting in a low tone with piano accompaniment.
	Low violin tone.		Synthesized tone.
	Violin tone.		Electronic repeating echoing tone.
	High violin tone.		Man saying "bay-loop" in a low, slow tone.
	Electric guitar playing musical note; a single tone plucked on a steel string guitar.		Tone sliding from high to low.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Familiar Quotations: Tone

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Use in Literature: Tone

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Non-Fiction Usage: Tone

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Spoken Usage: Tone

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Speeches: Tone

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Usage Frequency: Tone

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Name Usage Frequency: Tone

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Usage in Company Names: Tone

Source: compiled by the editor from Icon Group International, Inc.

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Expressions: Tone

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Tone

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Modern Translation: Tone

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Ancestral Language Translations: Tone

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Bible Trace: Tone

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Matched Bible Translations: Tone

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Derivations & Misspellings: Tone

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Rhyming with "Tone"

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Anagrams: Tone

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