Whether and how do Mandarin sandhied tone 3 and underlying tone 2 differ?

Abstract

One interesting linguistic question has been whether and how the characteristics of sandhied Tone 3 are similar to or different from an underlying Tone 2 in Mandarin. In this study, we took a micro view to investigate the vowel height, duration, and rime structure in syllables, and their influence on the degree of Tone 3 sandhi through native speakers’ speech production and perception. It was found that vowel height and duration played important roles in shaping the F0 contour of the sandhied Tone 3 in production. As to perception, sandhied Tone 3 syllables with low vowels and longer duration were more likely to be perceived as Tone 3.