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| A Study on the Prosodic Motivation and Register Mechanism of Third Tone Sandhi in Mandarin Chinese |
| Cui Sixing |
| (School of Chinese Language and Literature， Central China Normal University， Wuhan 430079) |
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Abstract The third-tone sandhi in Mandarin， particularly in reduplicated structures， provides insight into its motivations and mechanisms. Tone sandhi in Chinese is not only conditioned by phonetics and grammar but also shaped by prosody and register. In reduplicated third-tone sandhi， the colloquial and formal registers adopt different tonal patterns， demonstrating that tone sandhi serves as a register marker. The high-level tone in AA reduplication follows this process： the second A undergoes neutralization first， and become a neutral tone. As the neutral tone undergoes retroflex suffixation， both tonal and register shifts occur—the tone changes from neutral to high-level， and the register shifts from formal to colloquial. The high-level tone requires the presence of a neutral tone， while retroflex suffixation further reinforces the register shift. These phenomena suggest that tone sandhi in Chinese result from the combined influence of prosody and register.
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Received: 03 April 2025
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2025, Vol. 64 
