Editing Ticuna language (section)

=== Tones ===
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Ticuna is an unusually tonal language for South America, with over 10 mostly contour tones. Ticuna has one of the largest tone inventories in the world with 8–12 phonemic tones depending on the dialect.{{citation needed|date=May 2021}} Tones are only indicated orthographically, with diacritics, when confusion is likely.

Research has indicated isolated tonal languages with complex tones are more likely to occur in regions of higher humidity and higher mean average temperature because it is believed the vocal folds can produce less consistent tones in colder, drier air. Ticuna was one of the languages of focus in this study due to its prevalence—and complexity—of tones.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Everett |first=Caleb |display-authors=etal |date=February 3, 2015 |title=Climate, vocal folds, and tonal languages: Connecting the physiological and geographic dots |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |volume=112 |issue=5 |pages=1322–7 |bibcode=2015PNAS..112.1322E |doi=10.1073/pnas.1417413112 |pmc=4321236 |pmid=25605876 |s2cid=1678719 |doi-access=free}}</ref>