The Dutch dialect of Venlo has a lexical tone opposition comparable to the
distinction between Accent I and Accent II in Scandinavian. The two word tone
patterns are realised in a variety of different ways, depending on the intonation
contour, on whether the word has a focus tone, and on whether it occurs finally or
nonfinally in the intonational phrase (IP). Twelve such contexts are identified, and an
autosegmental-metrical analysis is presented of the contours for the word tones in
each of these. The analysis is instructive because of its clear illustration of the
distinction between the phonological underlying representation and the phonological
surface representation, as well as of the distinction between the latter representation
and the phonetic realisation. In addition, because of the complexity of its tonal
phonology, the dialect is of considerable typological interest for the study of word
prosody and intonation.