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*    4. Falling Tone [ \ ]. This tone constitutes a glide from high to low



*made within a single syllable: compare the English word “house”



*spoken without any context.



*    The mid-falls [ (4-1) ], [ (3-1) ], [ (2-1) ], indicate the same fall starting from the



*1st, 2nd or 3rd mid tone. The difference between these mid-falls and



*the falling variant of the low tone is probably one of stress. The mid-falls,



*corresponding to certain semantic or grammatical functions, are marked



*in this book, while the falling variant of the low tone is not (v. above).



*Both high-low and mid-low falls are often very elusive and often can



*only with difficulty be distinguished from high or mid tones.



*    5. Rising Tone [ / ]. This tone usually rises from low to mid only



*(v. above, the “lowered” variant of the high tone). In the perfect



*form of verbs with a rising tone the author is not certain whether the



*low start of the rise does not disappear entirely if an object or a verb



*follows; some speakers seem to use a high tone only: in H. G. Amadasu’s



*speech, however, there seemed to be a rise, the lower part of which



*was very short: e.g. ɔxa-ɽe “he said” [ ˩ ˥ ˦ ] or [ ˩ / ˦ ]. A rise from mid



*to high occurs in the last syllables of one type of questions and has



*been marked in a few cases.



*    Rising-falling tones have been marked by [ / ‿ ˩ ], falling-rising tones



*by [ ˥ ‿ / ].



*    ELISION AND CONTRACTION



*    Elision of vowels has heen marked by a hyphen, e.g. kp-akpata [ / ˥ ˥ ]



*(from kpe [ / ] “to play” and akpata [ ˥ ˥ ˥ ] “harp”), and in difficult



*cases, especially in monosyllables, the full form has been given in brackets



*at the end of the example. Contraction of two vowels of the same quality



*has been marked in the same way, only one vowel being written.



*Nasalisation carried forward as a result of elision or contraction is



*shown by a tilde (～), even when the vowel thus marked follows a



*nasal. Where the group (verb＋noun object) is not given as a contracted



*or uncontracted whole with one tonal bracket, but each component



*separately, another object is usually found between the two components,



*e.g. mu [ ˥ ] ixo [ ˩ ˩ ] “to let blood”, ɔmu ʋ̃-ĩxo n-owiɛ [ ˩ ˥ ˩ ˩ \ ˥ ] “he let my



*blood this morning”. The sign ‿ under the line has been used freely



*in order to show that the final vowel of a word and the initial vowel of



*the next one may form one syllable. In such cases, as well as in those



*elisions in which a vowel is left on both sides of the hyphen, each vowel



*has its separate tone-mark in order to facilitate grammatical analysis,



*e.g. in ebi‿ɛba [ ˩ ˥ ˥ ˦ ] instead of [ ˩ ˥ ˦ ], or hɔ‿ukpɔ̃ [ ˩ ˥ ˩ ] instead of [ / ˩ ].



*Only one sign, however, has been written in words formed out of two



*separate elements, e.g. isiamɛ [ ˩ ˩ ˩ ] (si [ ˥ ]＋amɛ [ ˩ ˩ ]).



*    The vowels given in brackets may, or may not be heard; they have



*xiv