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Wobé (Ouobe) is a Kru language spoken in Ivory Coast. It is one of several languages in a dialect continuum called Wèè (Wɛɛ).

Tone

Wobé is known for claims that it has the largest number of tones (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:

References

1. Wobé at Ethnologue (18th ed., 2015) (subscription required)

• Bearth & Link, 1980. "The Tone Puzzle of Wobe". Studies in African Linguistics, 11:2:147–207.
• Paul Newman, 1986. "Contour Tones in Grebo". In Stewart et al. eds. The Phonological representation of suprasegmentals. Notes 12, 14 (pp 190–191).
  
• John Singler, 1984. "On the underlying representation of contour tones in Wobe. Studies in African Linguistics, 15:1:59–75.

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