Editing Afroasiatic languages (section)

===Tones===
The majority of Afroasiatic languages are [[tonal language]]s: phonemic tonality is found in Omotic, Chadic, and Cushitic languages, but absent in Berber and Semitic. There is no information on whether Egyptian had tones.{{sfn|Meyer|Wolff|2019|p=265}} In contemporary Omotic, Chadic, and Cushitic languages, tone is primarily a grammatical feature: it encodes various grammatical functions, only differentiating lexical roots in a few cases.{{sfn|Frajzyngier|2012|p=12}} In some Chadic and some Omotic languages every syllable has to have a tone, whereas in most Cushitic languages this is not the case.{{sfn|Frajzyngier|2012|p=513}} Some scholars postulate that Proto-Afroasiatic may have had tone, while others believe it arose later from a [[pitch accent]].{{sfn|Meyer|Wolff|2019|p=265}}

{| class="wikitable"
|+ Examples of tones marking lexical and morphological changes in some Afroasiatic languages, after {{harvnb|Frajzyngier|2012}}
|-
! Language !! colspan="3" | Examples
|-
| rowspan="2" | Somali (Cushitic) || díbi ''bull'', absolutive case || dibi ''bull'', nominative case || dibí ''bull'', genitive case
|-
| ínan, ''boy'' || colspan="2" | inán ''girl''
|-
| Bench (Omotic) || k'áyts' ''work! do it!'' (active imperative) || colspan="2" | k'àyts' ''be done!'' (passive imperative)
|-
| rowspan="2" | Hausa (Chadic) || màatáa ''woman, wife'' || colspan="2" | máatáa ''women, wives''
|-
| dáfàa ''to cook'' (infinitive) || colspan="2" | dàfáa ''cook!'' (imperative)
|}