Strange Pronunciation of 小姐 !?

[Apollys]

This audio clip has me really confused, I'm hearing 小姐 pronounced something like back to back half-third tones or a half-fourth tone followed by a (half) third tone.  Does it sound natural/normal to you veterans and native speakers?

周小姐.mp3

[Publius]

I'd say it's perfectly normal, 教科书一般地标准.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology#Third_tone_sandhi and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology#Neutral_tone.

[Apollys]

?

 

The "textbook pronunciation" based on the links you posted would imply 小姐 should be pronounced 2-3.

[Flickserve]

 

It sounds natural to me.

 

What did praat analyse it as?

[yueni]

It sounds natural and "标准". What makes it sounds odd or off to you?

[Guest realmayo]

I guess one question is whether the 姐 should trigger Tone 3->2 sandhi on the 小, despite the 姐 being neutral? Technically it should but this example may break that pattern for any number of reasons.

 

Perhaps because while 小姐 on its own should trigger the sandhi on 姐, the fact that it's 周小姐 serves to unstress the whole of the 小姐. I think a lot of people would pronounce the 先 in 先生 differently in fluid speech depending if it's 先生 or 周先生. And indeed differently if you were introducing 周先生 as a VIP at a meeting, compared to referring to him for the third time in a conversation.

 

Consider someone studying English who has learned that the main stress on "president" is on the first syllable, but then hears a snippet of conversation between journalists talking about "President Trump" and running together all three syllables of "president" in an unstressed way and only stressing the "Trump". I reckon that's similar here.

 

So there are rules, and then there are normal speech conventions.

 

Furthermore your mp3 sentence is part of a question: first, this will change the tones (the speaker will use intonation to show it's a question); second, the sentence ends in a 的 so the speaker will want to make sure that the 的, while not necessarily toned or stressed, is clearly demarcated from 姐 (otherwise the listener will think it's a possessive 的 and be left hanging: 周小姐的什么？) . All this will change how the 小姐 is pronounced.

 

Fun stuff to think about but I'm certainly not clever enough to remember all these variables and then, when speaking, analyse which applies where and instantly deploy the correct answer. Instead my approach has to be to listen listen listen until things start sounding normal and natural and I end up reproducing them without really thinking about it.

[Lu]

1 hour ago, realmayo said:

I guess one question is whether the 姐 should trigger Tone 3->2 sandhi on the 小, despite the 姐 being neutral? Technically it should but this example may break that pattern for any number of reasons.

As I learned it, in this particular word, 小 is always pronounced in the second tone (because of the sandhi) even though 姐 is neutral. No matter if there is a surname in front of it, whether you're introducting a particular 小姐 or are referrring to her for the fifth time in a conversation, or whether you're yelling it across a restaurant.

 

My theory is that this grew to be so because it's such a common word. It probably started out as a regular 3->2 - 3 word, and the second tone stayed even when the second syllable became neutral tone.

[Guest realmayo]

2 hours ago, Lu said:

As I learned it, in this particular word, 小 is always pronounced in the second tone (because of the sandhi)

Yep me too.

[Kevin Li]

Sounds natural to me too. I think @realmayo's explanation is the correct one that when speaking in context, the tones might get screwed up a little bit and not match "textbook pronunciations" perfectly.

[Daniel Tsui44]

It's a fair 3 3 pronuciation.

[歐博思]

Normal sounding tone terracing.

[Guest realmayo]

I don't think so. Or at least, I don't think that link explains how a rising tone becomes a falling one.

 

[歐博思]

It's like the Tower of Terror at Disneyland: you go down but your scream goes up.

[Guest realmayo]

The link seems to be referring to absolute pitch, but what we've got here is sound that 'should' be rising, which is actually falling.

[歐博思]

Yeah I know... if she was skiing on her tone contours then she'd be not losing much speed at all if not gaining. But something tells me we'd notice a big difference if it were different tones and still at the end of the phrase, maybe 周小胖