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| In phonetics, downstep is a phonemic or phonetic downward
shift of tone between the syllables or words of a tonal
language. It is best known in the tonal languages of West
Africa, but the pitch accent of Japanese (a non-tonal language)
is quite similar to downstep in Africa. Downstep contrasts with
the much rarer upstep. The symbol for downstep in the
International Phonetic Alphabet is a superscript down arrow, ꜜ
(↓). It is common to see a superscript exclamation mark, ꜝ (!),
used instead due to typographic constraints. Phonetic downstep
may occur between sequences of the same phonemic tone. For
example, when two mid tones occur together in Twi, the second is
at a lower pitch than the first. Thus downstep plays a vital
role in downdrift and tone terracing. Phonemic downstep may
occur when a low tone is elided, or occurs as a floating tone,
and leaves a following tone at a lower level t