Tones

Oshri developped tones to replace heavy successions of the same vowel, that could go up to V:V:V:V: (e.g. /e:e:e:/ since pure and triangular harmonies often feed those into words where /b,d,g/ are entirely dropped intervocallically, as well as /ɣ/ between the same two vowels).

The diachrony of dūrūdūbū (think-VOLTVolitive (mood)
to wish for something.3PLUnknown code) highlights the genesis of the phenomenon.

/duːruːduːbuː > duːɾuːðuːβuː > duːɾuːúːuː > duːɾuːúː > duːɾǔ/

This gave rise to a set of three tones: V(:)V(:)V(:) clusters inherited a rising tone V̌, smaller V:V(:) clusters now have a falling tone /V̂/ and simple VV clusters now use a plain high tone /V́/. Keep in mind that V can only be one single vowel per occurrence.

Note: V(:)V(:)V(:)V(:) clusters used to have a falling-rising tone which has now simplified into a descending tone.

Note: V:V clusters emerging on morphological grounds are simplified to VV. Thus nhū /ɣuː/ doesn't yield *nhūul */ɣûl/ in the definite, but nhuul /ɣúl/.

Due to the variation in the size of the vowel clusters that were reduced into tones, the length of the tonal vowel varies dialectally as well as its exact height. However, the following transcriptions are quite common and mostly consistent with the dialectal tendencies. The percentages show the proportion of the population that used a given specific tone according to a 2017 study conducted on 10,283 Oshri speakers of diverse dialects.

Tone	Realization	Incidence	Total incidence of chosen realizations
V̌	V¹¹³	39%	93%
	V¹²⁴	37%
	V³¹³	9%
	V¹³¹	8%
V̂	V⁴¹	54%	89%
V̂	V⁴²¹	35%	89%
V́	V⁴	30%	85%
	V⁴³	28%
	V³	27%

Words without a distinctive tone are regularly stressed with /V³/ on the penultimate syllable. In minor areas, /V²/ is heard to account for /V́/ realized as /V³/. Some dialects seemed to have stress as /V⁴/ and /V́/ as /V³/, causing stress vs. high tone reversion, but only a few studies brought this up in the 1940s and 1950s; should this distinction ever have been real, it is now extinct. Most dialects with /V́/ realized as /V³/ undergo stress and high tone merger, sometimes analyzed as high tone dropping.

H = high
R = rising
D = falling

HC(C)H becomes DC(C)H, so ”doboröböd” is not */dóɾǿt/ but /dôɾǿt/.

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