Tone for yi in 同一个人: 1st, 2nd, or 4th?

[MariaMaria]

In the phrase 同一个人 (同一個人), I've heard 3 tone variants for 一: 1st, 2nd, and 4th.

 

Native speakers confirm to me that all 3 variants occur normally. Non-linguist native speakers whom I've asked don't have a consistent view about what is "right" (prescriptively) or what are sociocultural implications for each variant (I've heard that teenagers say 2nd tone more, while 4th is more older sounding, but I've also heard the opposite).

 

The textbook prescriptive rule for 一 which I learned is: "1st tone when alone, 2nd tone when followed by a 4th tone, and 4th tone when followed by any other tone." (copied from an old article on Sinosplice). However, it seems to me that most native speakers not just don't follow this rule in their normal speech, but have never heard of this rule (in contrast, most people I speak to consciously know other tone sandhi rules).

 

What do you think about frequency of use of each 一 tone variant in your region? Are there sociocultural associations to each?

[Tiana]

The rule is pragmatic and simple to remember. I wouldn't dream of going  for regional or sociocultural associations to the variants unless I'm writing a Ph.D thesis on them

[MariaMaria]

Thanks for the reply, Tiana. At beginning level, the basic rules are fine to start, but as I learn more, I'm very interested to understand the depth and nuance of each variant. For example, Michaelyus in his answer to this post gave a such link to a such fascinating article about "de-retroflection of sibilant fricatives [ʂ] , and labial glide deletion [wɔ] [ɔ], in the speech of Taipei County high school students." Maybe I'm crazy, but I really love this stuff. If any you guys have same type of information about 一 tone variats, please let me know some day. Thanks!

[Michaelyus]

This is slightly tangential to the main sociolinguistic point, but one thing that has dropped out of "fashion" is the tone sandhi of 七 and 八 in the same way as 一 and 不. This 2010 paper (in Chinese) says that 

目前，“七、八”的变调的特殊模式已处在解体的过程中，将来很可能会完全消失。

 

 

At present, the special case of tone sandhi involving 七, 八 is in the process of weakening, and may completely disappear in future,

 

 

 

Compare this with the statement from 2000 in the seminal tome Tone Sandhi: Patterns across Chinese Dialects, when the opposite was very much the case:

 

One such alternation is referred to in Chang (1992:166f.) as the Yi-bu-qi-ba rule, because it applies specifically to a closed list of the four lexical items.

[MariaMaria]

That's very interesting. Thanks for that point, Michaelyus. In my own speaking, I'd actually internalized a no-tone-sandhi rule for 七 and 八, but I hadn't realized explicitly that it's disappearing. I listened today in stores and restaurants to people using numbers frequently, and I didn't hear any tone sandhi for those characters in any situation.

Thanks for that