neutral tone on last syllable

[freefall]

So I was talking to a native source about the "neutral tone on last syllable" phenomenon. He said that you can do it with adjectives:

漂亮 can be either piao4liang (common, used for narration or normal speech) or piao4liang4 (emphatic)

But not for verbs:

发现 is always fa1xian4 and to say xian with a neutral tone would sound strange.

--------------------------------

So basically I'm wondering if this simple rule is completely correct and always applies, or if it's generally correct and works most of the time with a few exceptions, or...

What about adjectives and verbs with 3 or more syllables?

Any examples that come to your head where this doesn't apply? Like an adj. where the final character must have it's original tone?

Thanks!

[self-taught-mba]

KONG4 ZHI4 often sounds neutral on the 2nd

[self-taught-mba]

Also I find it just kind of depends. Then I remembered this from articles I've stashed away:

The neutral tone has been observed to be related

to stress. It is generally believed that every stressed

syllable in Mandarin has a tone and that when a syllable

is weak-stressed or ‘unstressed’, the tone becomes

neutralized. In this way, weak stress, or nonstress, and

the neutral tone are tied together. In yet another study,

the neutral tone and weak stress are not even distinguished. However, there is still a great deal of

controversy concerning what exactly the neutral tone is.

And, it is obvious that the neutral tone and stress is

related, but what exactly is this relationship? Despite the

tremendous progress in Chinese tones

From an article entitled: "Tonal Neutralization in Chinese: a Cross-Dialectal Perspective"

Had on my hard drive; can't find the link too lazy to search google right now:mrgreen:

[againstwind]

Syllables below are usually neutral tones.

1) Auxiliary words ‘的，地，得，着，了，过’and exclamations‘吧，嘛，呢，啊’etc.

教书的 愉快地 学得好 笑着 吃了 看过 他呢？ 谁啊？ 算了吧 放心吧

2）Some words made up by double characters. The second is neutral tone.

妈妈 弟弟 娃娃 星星 坐坐 看看 劝劝

3）Suffix ‘子，头，们’

鸽子 燕子 包子 儿子 石头 馒头 木头 我们 你们 他们

However, if ‘子’and‘头’ are substantives, they are not neutral tone.

孔子 原子 男子 龙头 猪头

4) Morphemes expressing location or direction after nouns or pronound.

马路上 脸上 山下 地底下 城市里 前边 左边 外面 里面

5) Morphemes expressing the tendency after verbs or adjectives.

送来 进来 起来 过去 出去 上去 说出来 夺回来 热起来 冷下去 跑过去

6) In some disyllabic words, the 2nd is customarily neutral tone.

noun: 云彩 蘑菇 护士 事情 脑袋 胳膊 东西 买卖 窗户 算盘 消息 干部 西瓜 动静 石榴 力量 扫帚 风筝 丈夫 先生 关系 行李 包袱

verb: 应付 招呼 吩咐

adj.: 体面 清楚 稀罕 便宜 漂亮 客气 亮堂

7) others

来来去去 打打闹闹 黑不溜秋 傻不啦叽 糊里糊涂 啰里啰唆

Tips：

Generally, neologisms and scientific terms have no neutral tone. Many disyllabic words

contain neutral tones in the 2nd syllable.But it is no more than a habitual speaking way in oral Chinese, which has been accepted by people for long time. So it is hard to find a universal rule to explain when to pronounce neutral tone in disyllabic words.

The rules above are based on the relationship among grammar, meaning and pronunciation. Meanwhile, rules can be observed to be related to stress as what self-taught-mba has cited.