明白 tones

[chrix]

this looks interesting aristotle. Well, now we just need more data. So you would ask 20 different native speakers if you could record them, and then would ask them to read several sentences, so you can get about 200 tokens, and then you measure the pitch, and hope it's statistically significant (just kidding!)

Because with the one datum you posted, I'm afraid we won't be able to agree what that means, the qingsheng camp will see a qingsheng, and the fourth tone camp will see a fourth tone that's been cut off...

[Shi Tong]

I reckon Taiwan standard of a lot of these sounds is different anyhow, and I'm not used so much to the Beijing accent. A great example of this is guan1xi1, which in Taiwan is almost exclusively pronounced as guan1xi1.

On another topic which came up- I have sometimes heard and pronounced tones wrong and got so used to them that I cant hear them any other way. Probably the best example of this for me is 可以, which is supposed to be pronounced kě​yǐ​, but obviously with the ke as a second tone. I nearly always hear this as k​é​yì​, especially when asking kěbù​ké​yì​.

I know I'm wrong, but I still pronounce it this way.. I'd even say it "sounds" like that, but obviously there's no rhyme or reason why the second kě in this sentance would change to a ké, because it's followed by my imaginary 4th tone.

qing1sheng1 does definately pose it's own challenges though, as it's pretty strange, and I would say accent can easily play a strong role in it too. I know exactly how to pronounce qing1sheng1 sounds in Taiwan, and it depends, word to word, phrase to phrase, sentance to sentance, but I'm sure this changes elsewhere.