TONE IN KANISE KHUMI NOUNS

This thesis describes nominal tone in Kanise Khumi [cek], a Kuki-Chin (KC) language in the Tibeto-Burman (TB) branch of the Sino-Tibetan family. Spoken in western Myanmar, it represents one of many underdescribed KC languages. In KC there is a particular lack of understanding and documentation of tone (VanBik 2009; Mortenson 2013). The existing descriptions of Kanise Khumi nominal tone include description of surface tone patterns on sesquisyllabic nouns (Baleno 2020, 2021), analysis of surface tone patterns on minor syllables (Tan 2022a, b), and description of surface tone patterns on monosyllabic nouns in isolation (Ikeda 2021). Ikeda identifies three tone patterns, following typical tone analysis procedures for Southeast Asian languages such that pitch and phonation type are bundled together to describe phonemic tone. This thesis distinctly expands the study of nominal tone by analyzing tone as pitch contrasts isolated from phonation type. This analysis reveals three contrastive tones limited to the minor syllables, while major syllables have phonation contrasts with correlated pitch. This study contributes to the understanding of KC tone, and to a newly forming image of tone and tonogenesis in Kanise Khumi.