Two fourth tones

[carlo]

Everyone on this list probably knows what happens to two consecutive Mandarin third tones in normal speech. There are few more subtle changes in the way tones are realised in connected speech. All these changes are usually recognized by speakers and are described in books/dictionaries.

Has anyone ever tried to describe systematically what happens with two 4 tones?

What I believe I'm hearing in Beijing Mandarin is that not all words are born equal. For example, 电话 and 介绍 do not really sound the same, almost as if speakers were regularly placing a "stress" on the second (话） and first (介) syllable respectively. Am I imagining this? Has anyone ever studied this phenomenon? Can anyone come up with more examples? It's not quite the same thing as a 轻音 (the way Beijingers for example pronounce 答复), but it's a bit like, something in between.

[CBC]

The tone of the first word is usually half done while the second is fully pronounced.

[HashiriKata]

What you've described is not a matter of tone, but is a phenomenon called Word Stress (词的重音). Within a dissyllabic word in Chinese, the stress can fall on either the 1st or more usually the 2nd syllable. Here are some examples involving pairs of 4th tone syllables: 画报，再见，宿舍，介绍 , 告诉, etc. (the bold characters are stressed.)

You're right to differentiate this phenomenon with that of the neutral tone. However, when the stress on a syllable is almost absent, the syllable becomes... "neutered": 认识 (ren4shi5), 漂亮 (piao4liang5)

[carlo]

Oh, ok. Yes I have heard of 重音. Thanks.

Are there any books/dictionaries out there that tell you where the stress falls for each dysillabic word? I think I've been picking up quite a few randomly here and there, but I've never seen a written reference. Ideally you would expect to find this marked in dictionaries. And yet not a single one of the monolingual and bilingual dictionaries I have seen in my life (at least 20) carry this information.

I wouldn't be surprised if this stress pattern could even affect the meaning of some words: for example, if I say 当地政府建筑了铁路, the stress seems to fall on 筑. However, if 建筑 is a noun, as in 老北京的建筑很特别, I think the stress should fall on 建. Again, I'm only a learner, and I may be totally wrong.

[HashiriKata]

My comments above are only personal observations and I don't know if the subject has been well studied. If it has, you'll be more likely to see it in research papers rather than in books (quite a few things turned up when I tried "word stress, Chinese" in Google but hadn't the time to examine them closely). As you're in Bejing, you could start a small study of it with the help of native speakers (I'm in a remote corner of the UK and not a native speaker ). It sounds like a good topic for a dissertation.

I hope others on this board will be able to help you.

[carlo]

Thanks for replying. Apparently the research community is still divided on the issue. A web search produced some interesting examples (责任、药品、手艺), and as many research papers, in both English and Chinese, that claim that word stress in Mandarin does not in fact even exist.

I also found a research project by the Education Commission of the city of Shanghai called 《现代汉语多音节词语轻重格式简明词典》which may be exactly what I'm looking for, if or when it is ever published. Its author, 宋怀强, is a well-known broadcaster with the Shanghai People's Radio.

[Neil_H]

Coming back to this old topic.

Last night I attended the first class of a course at college and the teacher had put together some listening tests to make sure we were picking up the tones correctly. The idea was to circle the correct answer.

The following was written down on the sheet.

Qu (4) Guo (4)

Or

Qu (4) Guo (5)

I picked the second one as I had heard somewhere that with two fourth tones you should drop the second one and make it a neutral.

The teacher said that the first answer was correct until I brought this information to her attention. She had a good think about it then agreed I was right.

I wanted to check I am right. I thought I heard about this one on Chinese pod once when John was giving a tones lesson.

Out of interest, some of the photo copies she had made from a book showed it as being Qu (4) Guo (5)

Thanks

[creamyhorror]

I think a stress system could be a major distinction between different accents of Chinese. Standard broadcaster-type Putonghua (in my unsupported opinion) seems to have less of a stress system than local accents like Beijinghua. Taiwanese Mandarin doesn't have the stress/emphasis system that Bejinghua has; the emphasis between characters is more even. That difference shows up as a relative lack of neutral tones in TwM.

To my Singaporean ear, saying qu4 guo5 instead of qu4 guo4 sounds like Mainland speech, as opposed to Taiwanese.

[Scoobyqueen]

I recently did a bunch of lessons on tones (at Live the Language). The teacher stated that mostly it was the second hanzi that was longer (with two consecutive fourth tones); she added that foreigners mostly don't use the full spectrum of the tones: They may pronounce the tones correctly but they often do not use a high and a low enough pitch (I think it is called). That was quite interesting to learn.

[imron]

I had heard somewhere that with two fourth tones you should drop the second one and make it a neutral.

不对

There are of cases where that doesn't apply (e.g. those two 4th tones I just used), but I agree that in your questions 去过 sounds better with 过 pronounced with a neutral tone.

[Neil_H]

Yes, bu becomes a second tone.

[OneEye]

I agree about the Taiwan Mandarin thing. My teacher swears up and down that she teaches us 標準的中文 and that it's the same as Beijing's 普通話 standard, but it's not. Neutral tones are few and far between, but I kind of like it. My accent is more toward the Mainland but it's slowly starting to shift toward Taiwanese Mandarin. The girl at the 牛肉麵 place on my block wrinkles up her nose when I slip and say 一點兒 so I try not to (same deal with "y'all" when I lived in Boston). I'll be keeping my retroflex initials though, thankyouverymuch.

[Neil_H]

I found quguo in my dictionary last night and it was listed as qu(4) guo (5)

What makes it bad was the fact it was listed as a right/wrong answer on the test sheet she gave us.

The sheet was a photo copy taken from a book.