Neutral Tone in Mandarin: Phonotactic Description and the Issue of the Norm

Abstract

Neutral tone in Mandarin is studied & the existence of stressed neutral-toned syllables in addition to weak-stressed toned syllables described. It is noted that while the neutral tone in certain forms does not trigger a sandhi change, in other forms it does. Grammatical approaches to this problem in previous research are found to be inadequate, & an explanation for the phenomenon is proposed: neutral tone & weak stress are two separate entities, & hence do not interact in terms of cause & effect. Certain grammatical morphemes in Mandarin lacking tone at both the deep & surface levels are usually weak-stressed, but even when normal-stressed do not trigger sandhi changes. Lexical neutral tone items are examined & tonal readings of 760 disyllabic lexical items from three dictionary sources are studied. Extensive inconsistencies of tone marking are shown to require revision of dictionary tonal annotation. Modified HA.