This is the first comprehensive study of the intonation of different languages of the world, written by a team of leading scholars in the field, most of whom are native speakers of the language in question. Surveying twenty languages, the volume introduces a new system for the multilingual transcription of intonation patterns. The chapters are organized following the same general outline to highlight the differences among languages. The emphasis is on description and comparison, rather than on theory, making this an invaluable sourcebook for researchers in the field.