Contextual variation of tones in mizo

Mizo is a Tibeto-Burman language belonging to the Kuki-Chin subfamily and it has four lexical tones, namely, high, low, rising and falling. Contextual influence on tones of Mizo is investigated in this study. Trisyllabic Mizo phrases are recorded with the four Mizo tones in H H, R R, L L and F F contexts. The target word is also recorded in isolation. Both carryover and anticipatory influences were found in various degrees. In case of low tone targets, preceding tones with high offset raises the target low tone. In case of rising tone targets, following tones with high onset reduce the tone to L tone. The preceding tone does not affect the target tone, in this case. Finally, the results of this study are discussed in comparison to contextual variations reported in other tone languages such as Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese and Thai.