The relative pitch height of parts of an utterance allows us to define what is meant by tone. Listen to the following two utterances of the word so. You can also have a look at a diagram of the fundamental frequency contours. The first one starts lower and finishes higher, the tone is a rise (we will use the symbol / to indicate this). The second starts higher and finishes lower, a fall (the symbol is \).
| /so |
\so |
 |
 |
The rise or fall tone can extend over two (or more) syllables as in the following utterances
| /never |
\never |
|
|
