Not overdoing the fourth tone

[Guest realmayo]

I came across the following:

 

In non-final position and also in connected speech ... tone 4 is mostly realised as 53 [versus normally 51].

 

... tone 4 becomes 53 when followed by another tone 4. However in connected speech, tone 4 is often phonetically a 52 or 53 tone.

 

So tone 4 behaves like tone 3 in that they can both be shortened when followed by another tone. 

 

 

These sound right to me and I think anyone who is exposed to lots of Chinese speech will -- often without realising it -- absorb and reproduce these changes.

 

I know this is just a fairly elementary example of how tones change in real usage but I thought it was nice to see it written down. I'm trying to smooth away any habitual pronunciation errors at the moment & it's reassuring to read that I don't have to re-emphasise all my fourth tones. In fact that stacatto and 'studied-aggressive' way of speaking with all fourth tones being 51 is perhaps one feature of laowai Chinese?

 

The quoted text is from The Sounds of Chinese by Yen-Hwei Lin. (It also says the most important thing to bear in mind for fourth tones is getting the starting pitch high enough each time, which I think I often fail to do).

 

 

Another example of tone changes in the book that I thought was interesting was tone 2 sandhi: where (depending on the speaker):

 

a three-syllable expression with:

syllable 1: tone 1 or tone 2

syllable 2: tone 2 

syllable 3: any tone 1-4

 

... then syllable 2 can happily change to tone 1 e.g. 葱油饼; 还没完

 

Again, this is probably old news to advanced students and not even news at all to advanced speakers but I think interesting nonetheless. I'm not sure it's anything to consciously try to emulate, but equally not a 'wrong' habit that needs correcting away.

Edited September 4, 2014 at 11:20 AM by realmayo

[lechuan]

What are tones 51, 52, and 53?

[Guest realmayo]

Ah, sorry:

 

The idea is a scale with 5 at the top and 1 at the bottom.

So a regular first tone will be 55, i.e. it begins at the top and ends at the top, high & level.

A regular fourth tone will be 51, it starts at the top and ends at the bottom, a falling tone.