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The Interplay of Perception and Phonology in Tone 3 Sandhi in Chinese Putonghua

The phenomenon of tone sandhi has long been noticed in the Chinese dialects (e.g. Chao 1948, 1968). Past studies allude that tone sandhis may be analyzed as processes leading to ease of articulation (Chao 1948, 1968; Cheng 1973; among others). But those analyses do not offer an explanation why one particular output is selected when other outputs are possible. Take for example the Tone 3 (or T3) sandhi process of standard mainland Mandarin Chinese, which is examined in this study. While simplification seems to be the correct analysis in that both native intuition and vocal physiology support the theory that it is hard to produce two dipping T3s in a row, it does not explain why T3 simplifies to T2 but not T1 or T4, the other two "simpler" tones in Mandarin Chinese. (See Section 2.1 for a detailed description of the tones in Standard Mandarin Chinese.)