lateral is most commonly analysed as an approximant as opposed to a flap. Tone Unusually for an Indo-Aryan language, Punjabi distinguishes lexical tones. Three tones are distinguished in Punjabi (some sources have described these as tone contours, given in parentheses): low (high-falling), high (low-rising), and level (neutral or middle). The transcriptions and tone annotations in the examples below are based on those provided in Punjabi University, Patiala’s Punjabi-English Dictionary. Level tone is found in about 75% of words and is described by some as absence of tone. There are also some words which are said to have rising tone in the first syllable and falling in the second. (Some writers describe this as a fourth tone.) However, a recent acoustic study of six Punjabi speakers in the United States found no evidence of a separate falling tone following a medial consonant. / , móḍà (rising-falling), "shoulder" It is considered that these tones arose when voiced aspirated consonants () lost their aspiration. At the beginning of a word, they became voiceless unaspirated consonants () followed by a high-falling tone; medially or finally they became voiced unaspirated consonants (), preceded by a low-rising tone. (The development of a high-falling tone apparently did not take place in every word, but only in those which historically had a long vowel.) The presence of an [h] (although the [h] is now silent or very weakly pronounced except word-initially) word-finally (and sometimes medially) also often causes a rising tone before it, for example "tea". The Gurmukhi script which was developed in the 16th century has separate letters for voiced aspirated sounds, so it is thought that the change in pronunciation of the consonants and development of tones may have taken place since that time. Some other languages in Pakistan have also been found to have tonal distinctions, including Burushaski, Gujari, Hindko, Kalami, Shina, and Torwali. Grammar Punjabi has a canonical word order of SOV (subject–object–verb). Function words are largely postpositions marking grammatical case on a preceding nominal. Punjabi distinguishes two genders, two numbers, and six cases of direct, oblique, vocative, ablative, and locative, and instrumental. The ablative occurs only in the singular, in free variation with oblique case plus ablative postposition, and the locative and instrumental are usually confined to set adverbial expressions. Adjectives, when declinable, are marked for the gender, number, and case of the nouns they qualify. There is also a T-V distinction. Upon