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Which Tibeto-Burman languages have both tonal and nontonal dialects?
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Tibeto-Burman languages
Relationships among the Tibeto-Burman languages.
Within the Tibeto-Burman languages, the presence of tone is highly variable across different groups. While many languages in this family possess contrastive, phonemic tone, others do not.
Specifically, the languages Tibetan and Qiang are noted for having both tonal and nontonal dialects.1
More broadly, the Qiangic, Himalayish, and Kamarupan groups are characterized by this internal diversity, as they comprise a mix of both tonal and nontonal languages. In these groups, the tonal systems are often rudimentary, sometimes featuring only two or three contrasts or utilizing tone-bearing units larger than a single syllable.1