Gabriel Swai is a conlanger, amateur linguist, and language learner. Before moving to the United States, he lived the first few years of his life in northern Tanzania, well within view of Mount Kilimanjaro. There, he was surrounded by a diverse range of languages from Maasai to Kimachame (his clan’s mother tongue), which sparked his initial passion for language. His primary interests include phonology, tone, historical linguistics, typology, African languages, Indigenous American languages, and language revitalization.
This paper serves as a guide for conlangers who wish to implement naturalistic grammatical tone in their constructed languages. It first introduces the basic concepts of tone. Then, through the lens of autosegmental theory, the article explores the various features a tone language may utilize. It finishes with an example from the author’s conlang Classical Arettian to demonstrate one way that a tonal conlang may work.
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