The current dimensions in the typology of tone are not insightful for understanding the properties of tone in Cushitic languages. Some Cushitic languages are characterised as “pitch-accent” and these cannot be considered stress languages because the criterion of obligatoriness of every word having a stressed unit is not valid for them. In Hyman’s (2006) typology these languages are (restricted) tone languages. Pitch as prominence marker does show stress-like tendencies of culminativity and demarcation in these languages which is why a label pitch-accent has been suggested. The tone properties are better explained by another dimension, namely the fact that the distinctive function of tone hardly plays a role at the lexical level but does play a role at the grammatical level