Production and Perception of Rising Tone Sandhi in Mizo

Abstract

Mizo, a Tibeto-Burman language of the Kuki-Chin group is primarily spoken in the north-east Indian state of Mizoram in Northeast India. Mizo has four lexical tones, namely, high (H), rising (R) , falling (F) and low (L). Mizo tones are mostly dynamic, except the H tone which is a static tone. Previous researches have reported that the rising tone in Mizo changes into low tone when it is followed by either high tone or falling tone which is regarded as rising tone sandhi. The present study analyzes the production and perception of rising tone sandhi. The production data of rising tone sandhi is carried out by comparing the F0 contours of the derived low tone of rising tone sandhi in trisyllabic phrases with the citation form of low tone and low tone in phrases. Results have shown that the F0 contour of rising tone sandhi and the canonical low tone in Mizo are different in terms of F0 contour. The result of perception study in the form of identification test has shown that the speakers of Mizo could distinguish the low tone derived out of rising tone sandhi from the canonical low tone which indicates that tone sandhi in Mizo is perceptually categorical.