First post. Wanted to title it "Speaking in tones," but that's not very informative.
Long ago, I learned a little about talking drums and whistle speech as long-range communication tools based not on direct semantic coding (Morse, e.g.) but on tonal and rhythmic paraverbals of natural language. (There's probably a better way to express that.) Now there are videos demonstrating such wonderful languages in use.
More recently, I got to wondering how this might play out when linguistically sophisticated speakers of Asian and other tonal languages converse with non-tonal language speakers in the latter's tongue - say, an educated, multilingual native Chinese speaking English with a monoglot American. For example, might the Chinese speaker
Flatten tonality generally
Follow the tonal syntax (and semiotics, if any) of native speaker
Adopt a group defined/defining tonal system
Make up (consciously or otherwise) an idiosyncratic tonal system
Use tonality in ways that the English speaker may not even sense, but that helps the Chinese speaker with his/her own feelings/expression
Use Chinese tonal cues as a covert way to express (for speaker's own benefit) insult, praise, feelings
do., in ways that carry meaning only to other tonal-language speakers who may be present
Et cetera. A unifying question might be: When speakers of tonal languages speak non-tonal languages to native speakers of the latter, do they make any special use of tonal inflection, and/or make any special effort to suppress tonality? Or do fluent multi-linguals tend to compartmentalize the "tonality" function as needed?
Not looking for help on a term paper or any real-life situation; just curious. Thanks for any insights!