catathesis

— The term ‘downstep’ was first used to refer to certain well-known phenomena in African tone languages that vaguely resemble the tonal implementation phenomenon we describe here. Since we are not in a position now to evaluate the precise extent of the formal similarity between the two classes of phenomena, we will use the term ‘catathesis’ only, withdrawing the term ‘downstep’ as it was used in Pierrehumbert (1980) and Beckman & Pierrehumbert (1985) out of deference to the Africanist usage.