Abstract
Tone is one of the common features of the world's languages. It is found not only in East and Southeast Asian languages, but in many languages of the world: native American, New Guinean, African, etc. If we add to this category pitch-accent languages, an overwhelming number of the world's languages can be seen to exploit this particular phonetic feature in varying degrees. Four languages and language groups are chosen in this issue to exemplify various tone types; namely, Chinese, Korean, Haida (North American) and Bantu (Africa). Although typology is considered in the analysis of these languages, we mainly intend to show different tone and/or pitch-accent languages, no unification being attempted as to the usage of the terms tone and pitch-accent.
