On mandarin tone 4∗

Abstract

Abstract This paper attempts to consider empirically the acoustical manifestation of Mandarin Tone 4, a high falling tone, as opposed to its auditory dimension observed first by Y.R. Chao (1948). Chao noticed that a Tone 4 followed by another Tone 4 does not fall to the bottom of the register; he called this tonal variation tone sandhi and set up a sandhi rule: 51+51 ? 53 +51. The present study acoustically analyses 240 Tone 4s spoken by two native Mandarin speakers through a monitoring process with the target Tone 4 in the following tonal environments: Tone 4 + Tone 1, Tone 4 + Tone 2, Tone 4 + Tone 3, Tone 4 + Tone 4, and Tone 4 + Tone 0. The results show that Tone 4 holds its fall before any full lexical tone, that is, before Tone 4 as well as before Tone 1, Tone 2 and Tone 3; it falls to its extremity before Tone 0 or a pause. This is because the tonal onsets of the following full lexical tones block the fall of the preceding Tone 4 owing to anticipatory coarticulation, while the inertia of Tone 0 and...