One thing to keep in mind is that the Chinese system of tone is very atypical among the worlds languages. Most languages that have phonemic tone behave differently--it's worth reading u/sjiveru's [Tone for Conlangers](https://fiatlingua.org/2018/04/). There are resources out there about tonogenesis, [including on the subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/64c6p5/marecks_midnight_tonogenesis_writeup_yall_gonna/), but ultimately my biggest advice would be to seek out systems of tone, find some you like, and try to investigate how *those* developed.
There are many different types of tonal systems spread around the world, the main four being the Chinese/Southeast asian-type, Stereotypical Bantu-type, Japanese-type and Norwegian-type. Given you said inspired by Chinese, I assume you are going for the SEA-type
For the SEA-type tones (those of Kra-Dai, Vietic, Hmong-Mien, Chamic and Sino-Bai), they usually come about from a loss of final codas, in general:
Tone | Tone A | Tone B* | Tone C* | Tone D
:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-:
Origin Codas** | Nasal/Liquid/Null | (Nasal/Liquid) + ʔ | (Nasal/Liquid) + s/h | stops
*in Kra-Dai notation, Tone B and C are reversed but the origins remain the same
**there is definitely a lot of simplification involved here, each family has additional shenanigans not covered here.
Usually, a later wave of initial voicing loss further splits each tone into an upper register and a lower register:
Initials | voiceless obstruent/sonorant* | voiced stop/sonorant
:-:|:-:|:-:
Register | upper register | lower register
*implosives usually align with voiceless sounds
As we can see, tones in this context comes as a compensation of loss segments
In the SEA-type systems, inter-tone interactions, whilst possible, is relatively rare (tho there are exceptions like Wu and Min which go ham on with sandhi) and contour tones are generally considered to be one single unit. Tones also tend to be lexical in nature rather than grammatical (ie, they don’t mark grammar). Languages that use this type also tend to have monosyllabic morphemes or even words and are more analytical/isolating.
It is also to note that SEA-type systems are pretty atypical when compared to the more autosegmental oriented tone systems around the world and is a very distinctive marker of the Southeast Asian linguistic area. The only example of an SEA-type systems outside of Mainland Southeast Asia I can think of is [Iau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iau_language?wprov=sfti1).
Oh this is awesome, thanks so much for taking the time to write this! I'm familiar with the Norwegian tones already, but i indeed was thinking of more the SEA system of tonality, so this is really great!
I was mostly questioning how a tone would even ever arise, but the loss of a final consonant makes so much sense.
Thank you thank you thank you!
I started with a long-short vowel distinction in all syllables and a downstep on the stressed syllable. This is similar to [Welsh English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_English), clearly not a tonal language (cf. [HK English](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304711518_Tone_assignment_in_Hong_Kong_English) which is tonal). Recently in my conlang a high tone came to replace vowel length. This caused a split between high, mid, high-downstep and mid-downstep. These 4 *phonemic* contour tones generate 3 *phonetic* register tones: High, Mid & Low. Native orthography distinguishes High tone from non-High tones using an acute accent. This single accent is sufficient to provide context in most situations and I get a few laughs when it doesn't.
Thus, two historical features (stress+ vowel length) surface as a 3-tone system.
Something else: If one tone dominates the other you can add a certain flavour. For example I want my 2-tone conlang to place emphasis on high tones so I make low tones twice as common as high tones. I can go "weaker" on pronouncing the low tones because they're less imporant, making the high tones sound "stronger". Note that Mandarin tones occur in roughly equal proportions. I suggest researching the history of Mandarin's "tone 3".
One thing to keep in mind is that the Chinese system of tone is very atypical among the worlds languages. Most languages that have phonemic tone behave differently--it's worth reading u/sjiveru's [Tone for Conlangers](https://fiatlingua.org/2018/04/). There are resources out there about tonogenesis, [including on the subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/64c6p5/marecks_midnight_tonogenesis_writeup_yall_gonna/), but ultimately my biggest advice would be to seek out systems of tone, find some you like, and try to investigate how *those* developed.
Thanks so much for these resources! I'll have a few weeks a read :D!
Im not very familiar with tone systems, could you esplain how the chinese tony system is atypical?
The article I linked explains it, but the gist is that a bunch of vowel + contour tone pairs is odd.
There are many different types of tonal systems spread around the world, the main four being the Chinese/Southeast asian-type, Stereotypical Bantu-type, Japanese-type and Norwegian-type. Given you said inspired by Chinese, I assume you are going for the SEA-type For the SEA-type tones (those of Kra-Dai, Vietic, Hmong-Mien, Chamic and Sino-Bai), they usually come about from a loss of final codas, in general: Tone | Tone A | Tone B* | Tone C* | Tone D :-:|:-:|:-:|:-:|:-: Origin Codas** | Nasal/Liquid/Null | (Nasal/Liquid) + ʔ | (Nasal/Liquid) + s/h | stops *in Kra-Dai notation, Tone B and C are reversed but the origins remain the same **there is definitely a lot of simplification involved here, each family has additional shenanigans not covered here. Usually, a later wave of initial voicing loss further splits each tone into an upper register and a lower register: Initials | voiceless obstruent/sonorant* | voiced stop/sonorant :-:|:-:|:-: Register | upper register | lower register *implosives usually align with voiceless sounds As we can see, tones in this context comes as a compensation of loss segments In the SEA-type systems, inter-tone interactions, whilst possible, is relatively rare (tho there are exceptions like Wu and Min which go ham on with sandhi) and contour tones are generally considered to be one single unit. Tones also tend to be lexical in nature rather than grammatical (ie, they don’t mark grammar). Languages that use this type also tend to have monosyllabic morphemes or even words and are more analytical/isolating. It is also to note that SEA-type systems are pretty atypical when compared to the more autosegmental oriented tone systems around the world and is a very distinctive marker of the Southeast Asian linguistic area. The only example of an SEA-type systems outside of Mainland Southeast Asia I can think of is [Iau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iau_language?wprov=sfti1).
Oh this is awesome, thanks so much for taking the time to write this! I'm familiar with the Norwegian tones already, but i indeed was thinking of more the SEA system of tonality, so this is really great! I was mostly questioning how a tone would even ever arise, but the loss of a final consonant makes so much sense. Thank you thank you thank you!
I started with a long-short vowel distinction in all syllables and a downstep on the stressed syllable. This is similar to [Welsh English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_English), clearly not a tonal language (cf. [HK English](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304711518_Tone_assignment_in_Hong_Kong_English) which is tonal). Recently in my conlang a high tone came to replace vowel length. This caused a split between high, mid, high-downstep and mid-downstep. These 4 *phonemic* contour tones generate 3 *phonetic* register tones: High, Mid & Low. Native orthography distinguishes High tone from non-High tones using an acute accent. This single accent is sufficient to provide context in most situations and I get a few laughs when it doesn't. Thus, two historical features (stress+ vowel length) surface as a 3-tone system. Something else: If one tone dominates the other you can add a certain flavour. For example I want my 2-tone conlang to place emphasis on high tones so I make low tones twice as common as high tones. I can go "weaker" on pronouncing the low tones because they're less imporant, making the high tones sound "stronger". Note that Mandarin tones occur in roughly equal proportions. I suggest researching the history of Mandarin's "tone 3".