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Mizo grammar is the grammar of the
Mizo language The Mizo language, or ''Mizo ṭawng'', is a Kuki-Chin-Mizo language belonging to the Tibeto-Burman family of languages, spoken natively by the Mizo people in the Mizoram state of India and Chin State in Myanmar. The language is also known as ...
, a
Tibeto-Burman language The Tibeto-Burman languages are the non-Sinitic members of the Sino-Tibetan language family, over 400 of which are spoken throughout the Southeast Asian Massif ("Zomia") as well as parts of East Asia and South Asia. Around 60 million people speak ...
spoken by about a million people in
Mizoram Mizoram () is a state in Northeast India, with Aizawl as its seat of government and capital city. The name of the state is derived from "Mizo people, Mizo", the endonym, self-described name of the native inhabitants, and "Ram", which in the Mizo ...
,
Manipur Manipur () ( mni, Kangleipak) is a state in Northeast India, with the city of Imphal as its capital. It is bounded by the Indian states of Nagaland to the north, Mizoram to the south and Assam to the west. It also borders two regions of Myanm ...
,
Tripura Tripura (, Bengali: ) is a state in Northeast India. The third-smallest state in the country, it covers ; and the seventh-least populous state with a population of 36.71 lakh ( 3.67 million). It is bordered by Assam and Mizoram to the east a ...
,
Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...
and
Chittagong Hill Tracts The Chittagong Hill Tracts ( bn, পার্বত্য চট্টগ্রাম, Parbotto Chottogram), often shortened to simply the Hill Tracts and abbreviated to CHT, are group of districts within the Chittagong Division in southeast ...
of Bangladesh. It is a highly
inflected In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defini ...
language, with fairly complex noun phrase structure and word modifications. Nouns and pronouns are declined, and phrasal nouns also undergo an analogous declension.


Word order

Mizo declarative word order is Object-subject-verb, as in:


Nouns

There is no grammatical gender in Mizo language, although some animals, birds etc. have names which contain one of the suffixes ''-nu'', which means ''female'', or ''-pa'' which means ''male''. Examples include ''chingpirinu'' (a type of big owl), ''kawrnu'' (a type of cicada), ''thangfènpa'' (a nocturnal bird).Chhangte, Lalnunthangi,
The Grammar of Simple Clauses in Mizo
'


Non-derived nouns

Mizo is an
agglutinative language An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) tend to remain ...
in which it is rare to find morphologically simple, non-derived nouns. However, common everyday objects and
domestic animal This page gives a list of domesticated animals, also including a list of animals which are or may be currently undergoing the process of domestication and animals that have an extensive relationship with humans beyond simple predation. This includ ...
s tend to fall in this category, that is, the category of morphologically simple, non-derived nouns. For example,


Derived nouns

The most common form of noun is that of derived, morphologically complex, poly-syllabic nouns. Most
abstract noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
s belong to this category, and so do wild animals and other less common objects. Examples include


Pluralisation

Nouns are pluralised by the addition of one of the suffixes ''-te'', ''-ho'', ''-teho'' and ''-hote''. However, a non-pluralised noun can have the sense of a pluralised noun, and
common noun A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', ''Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...
s are usually not pluralised, as in: Here ''sava'' is not pluralised to ''savate'' or ''savaho''; rather, ''sava'' functions as a plural.


Declension of nouns

Nouns are declined into cases as follows (here we show the tones in accordance with the usage i
Mizo Wiktionary
which is an extension of the common usage in Mizo newspapers such as Vanglaini and monthlies such as ''Lengzem chanchinbu''):This usage adapts Zoppen Club's usage. Proper nouns are also declined in the same manner:


Nominalisation

Verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
s and
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...
s are nominalised by suffixing ''-na'', and adjectives can also be nominalised by suffixing ''-zia''. For example: When ''-na'' is suffixed to a transitive verb then the resulting noun means either ''the instrument with which the action described by the verb is achieved'', or ''the object/sufferer of the action'' or ''the point of action of the verb''. For example, ''vùa'' means ''to beat/strike with a stick'', and ''vûakna'' means ''a whip'', ''an object with which one can beat'', or ''a point or place where the beating takes place'', ''a point where something is beaten''. When ''-na'' is suffixed to an intransitive verb, then the resulting noun means ''a place etc. through which the action can take place''. For example, ''kal'' means ''to go'', ''kalna'' means ''where something/someone goes or can go'', ''way'', ''path''. For example: When ''-zia'' is suffixed to an adjective, the resulting noun means ''the condition of having the quality described by the adjective''. For example, ''süal'' means ''evil'', ''sùalzìa means ''sinfulness'', ''evilness''.


Agentiviser

The suffix ''-tu'' in Mizo ṭawng is equivalent to the suffix ''-er'' or ''-or'' in English, as in:


Pronouns


Forms

All Mizo
pronouns In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the part of speech, parts o ...
occur in two forms, namely in free form and clitic form: The free form is mostly used for emphasis, and has to be used in conjunction with either the clitic form or an appropriate pronominal particle, as shown in the following examples: # Kei (=''I'' free form) ka (=''I'' clitic form)lo tel ve kher a ngai em?. This is a somewhat emphatic way of saying ''Ka lo tel ve kher a ngai em?'' # Nangni (=''you'' pl., free form) in (''you'' pl., clitic form) zo tawh em? This is a somewhat emphatic way of saying ''Nangni in zo tawh em?'' # Ani (''he/she'') a (''s/he'') kal ve chuan a ṭha lo vang. The clitic form is also used as a
genitive In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
form of the pronoun.


Declension

Mizo pronouns, like Mizo nouns, are declined into cases as follows:


Adjectives


Attributive

Mizo adjectives (Mizo: ''hrilhfiahna''), when used attributively, follow the nouns they describe, as follows:


Predicative

When used predicatively, Mizo adjectives are syntactically verbs, being usually preceded by the subject pronoun clitics, as in: In these two sentences, ''a'' is the subject pronoun clitic, and the adjectives ''fel'' and ''ṭha'' function as verbs (syntactically).


Adjective sequences

When adjectives follow each other, the preferred order is the following: # color # quality or opinion # size # shape as in :''Puan sen (color) mawi (quality) hlai (size) bial (shape) deuh.''


Quantifiers

The most common quantifiers in Mizo ṭawng are ''zawng zawng'' (all/each and every), ''ṭhenkhat'' (some f a whole, ''väi'' (all/every), ''zà'' (all/every). Some examples are given below:


Verbs


Occurrence

Verbs ( Mizo: thiltih) and verb phrases occur last in a sentence. Since adjectives can function as verbs, it is common in sentences to have no true verb, as in: :''A fel vek mai ang'' :''A dik vêl vek!'' In these two sentences, the adjectives ''fel'' and ''dik'' function syntactically as verbs, and there are no other verbs in either of them.


Tense

Mizo verbs are not conjugated by changing the
desinence In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry gr ...
. The tense is clarified by the ''aspect'' and the addition of conjugating particles, such as *''ang'' (for forming simple future), *''tawh'' (for forming
simple past The simple past, past simple or past indefinite, sometimes called the preterite, is the basic form of the past tense in Modern English. It is used principally to describe events in the past, although it also has some other uses. Regular English v ...
and
past perfect The pluperfect (shortening of plusquamperfect), usually called past perfect in English, is a type of verb form, generally treated as a grammatical tense in certain languages, relating to an action that occurred prior to an aforementioned time i ...
), *''mék'' (for forming
progressive tense The continuous and progressive aspects (abbreviated and ) are grammatical aspects that express incomplete action ("to do") or state ("to be") in progress at a specific time: they are non-habitual, imperfective aspects. In the grammars of many l ...
s, present and past), *''dáwn'' (for forming simple future), *''dáwn mék'' (for forming
near future The future is the time after the past and present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the unavoidability of the future, everything that currently ...
), etc.


Adverbs


Occurrence

Adverbs usually follow the verbs or adjectives they describe.


Notes and references

:''Others:'' :# Dokhuma, James, ''Mizo ṭawng kalphung'' :# Zoppen club, ''Mizo ṭawng thumal thar'', 2011. :# SCERT, ''Mizo grammar and composition'', cl XI & XII textbooks. {{language grammars Mizo language Sino-Tibetan grammars