Modifier Letter Raised Down Arrow

It marks a pitch step down in speech notation.

In IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet), IPA downstep notation uses ꜜ before a tone to show that a following high tone starts lower than the earlier high-tone level. The later tone can still rise or fall within its lower range. Some Japanese pitch-accent transcriptions put ꜜ after the accented mora—the word's timing beat—to mark the sharp drop into the next, lower-pitched beat.

The IPA Handbook attests the mark in 1999; a Urua example is also attested from 2004. The mark was already used in phonetic notation before it was encoded as a raised, half-height tone arrow, distinct from full-height arrows used for airflow.

Which mark is the downstep sign?

Use ꜜ for IPA downstep; other systems have their own marks.

In IPA, ꜜ and ꜛ are paired raised arrows for downstep and upstep. The full-height ↓ is a different character; raised tone arrows were distinguished from full-height arrows used for airflow. Some Africanist transcription uses raised ꜝ for downstep, while some Japanese dictionaries use ⌝ for the accentual fall.