Abstract
The main goals of this article are to clarify the following questions concerning the neutral tone in Standard Mandarin:BR (i) a. The exact tonal value of a neutral tone after a citation toneBR b. The reasons why the tonal value of the neutral tone after T3 is variableBR c. The correlations between the tonal value of neutral tone and the types of wordsBR The major findings of this phonetic experiment can be summarized as follows:BR (ii) a. The tonal value of neutral tone is mid falling, high falling, mid level, or low falling after T1, T2, T3, or T4 respectively, as summarized in data (12).BR b. The tonal value of the neutral tone after T3 has been controversial. The reason why it is unstable seems to be related with the fact that T3 is the only low tone in Standard Mandarin.BR c. The neutral tone in duplicated words behaves differently from other neutral tone words. Data (21) illustrates that the neutral tone after T1 is higher than that after T3 in duplicated nouns while the opposite is the case in other types of words containing neutral tones.
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