Wobé language
Encyclopedia
Wobé is a Kru language
Kru languages
-References:* Westerman, Diedrich Hermann Languages of West Africa . London/New York/Toronto: Oxford University Press.-External links:* at Ethnologue*...

 spoken in Ivory Coast. It is one of several languages in a dialect continuum
Dialect continuum
A dialect continuum, or dialect area, was defined by Leonard Bloomfield as a range of dialects spoken across some geographical area that differ only slightly between neighboring areas, but as one travels in any direction, these differences accumulate such that speakers from opposite ends of the...

 called Wèè (Wɛɛ).

Tone

Wobé is known for claims that it has the largest number of tones
Tone (linguistics)
Tone is the use of pitch in language to distinguish lexical or grammatical meaning—that is, to distinguish or inflect words. All verbal languages use pitch to express emotional and other paralinguistic information, and to convey emphasis, contrast, and other such features in what is called...

(fourteen) of any language in the world (Bearth & Link). However, this has not been confirmed by other researchers, many of whom believe that some of these will turn out to be sequences of tones or prosodic effects (Singler 1984, Newman 1986), though the Wèè languages in general do have extraordinarily large tone systems.

The 14 tones posited by Bearth & Link (1980) are:
IPA
˦ ˧ ˨ ˧˥ ˧˦ ˨˥ ˨˦ ˨˧ ˥˩ ˦˩
|˧˩
|˨˩
˨˧˩
B&L tone numbers 1 2 3 4 31 32 41 42 43 15 25 35 45 435
Newman adjustment 0 1 2 3 20 21 30 31 32 04 14 24 34 324
Asian convention 5 4 3 2 35 34 25 24 23 51 41 31 21 231
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