Zompist Bboard Again

If a language has long and short vowels, and the long vowels have low-high or high-low tone, is this a contour tone language, or is it two short vowels near each other with different tones? How would these two scenarios be different?

Also, thank you so much! You all are amazing!

Wait, if the only thing that distinguishes two words is a tone, then the tone is a phoneme, no? And the tones have to distinguish words, that is, some words (or inflections) have to only be different by the tones because otherwise, tones are not productive in the language, and they would have died o...

Okay, so all tonal languages probably end up with sandhi, then. My language definitely has inflections, lots of inflections! Can that work with a tonal language? Obviously, the tones technically increase the phonemes in a language. However, how do you create a tonal system that works together with e...

What exactly is tone Sandhi? What are floating tones? I have tried to research, but researching tones is ... less helpful than one might expect.

I can tell you that I do NOT want to go near contour tones, though, if that helps.

Hello, I am trying to write a conlang that probably needs to be tonal because of the setting, and the way I need it to sound. The problem is that I am not really a phonology person despite a decent background in linguistics. I understand what a tone is, and the difference between them in a system. I...