# Pronunciation: 出租车司机 (first tones in a row)



## Sibutlasi

Hello 


  According to one of the tone adjustment ('tone sandhi') rules stated in various grammars/textbooks of Mandarin, two consecutive first tones T1+T1 are realized as T4+T1. Since Mandarin phrases may contain sequences of 2, 3, 4, 5…, perhaps even more, consecutive syllables with T1, and tone adjustment rules elsewhere apply across word boundaries, a primary tonal sequence like T1+T1+T1+T1+T1, as in “chu1 zu1 che1 si1 ji1” (= "taxi-driver"), may yield very different results depending on how the T1+T1>T4+T1 rule applies. 

  For example, if the rule applied recursively irrespective of constituent structure, the outcome should be T4+T4+T4+T4+T1. If, on the contrary,  the rule applied ‘cyclically’, bottom up, first to the smaller constituents [chu1 zu1] and [si1 ji1], then to the intermediate constituent [[chu1 zu1] che1], and finally to the whole noun phrase (or compound) [[[chu1 zu1] che1] [si1 ji1]], the result should probably be [[[T4+T1]+T1] [+T4+T1]]. There are still other possibilities, but such details are not clarified in the grammars/textbooks I have seen.


  When I made the Text-to-Speech Site Pal machine pronounce “chu1 zu1 che1 si1 ji1” for me, eight different native Mandarin voices respectively produced tonal sequences very approximately corresponding to the following ‘melodies’:



  1.      D + C sharp + C + B + B flat
  2.      C sharp + C + B + A + B flat
  3.      C + B + B flat + A flat + A
  4.      G sharp + G sharp + A + B flat + F sharp
  5.      A flat + A + B flat + B + F sharp
  6.      B + B flat + A + A + B flat
  7.      A + A + B + F sharp + F sharp
  8.      B flat + B flat + B flat + A + C



  Obviously, since I was not using special equipment, I cannot claim absolute accuracy, but I did listen carefully and searched for the pitch of each syllable on the piano keyboard several times and I can be reasonably sure that the tonal sequences and intervals used by those eight speakers correspond fairly closely to the melodies just transcribed. 

  As you will observe, there are significant differences between 1, 2, 3 or 6, on one side, and 5, 7 or 8, for example (and Cantonese speakers at Text-to-Speech used still other pitch sequences I have not transcribed).


  My question, then, is this: How exactly does the T1+T1 > T4+T1 rule apply? And, in this particular case, is there a preferred tonal rendition of “chu1 zu1 che1 si1 ji1”, and how can the tonal-melodic differences above be explained? 

Thank you in advance.


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## stellari

I would pronounce all five characters with exactly the same frequency.

I think the 11->41 rule you mentioned applies only when the first  character is "一", and obviously does not apply in the phrase 出租车司机. 

In Mandarin, a tone is not defined by its absolute frequency: different speakers have different pitches for T1. Even for the same speaker, he may use different pitches at different occasions. In TTS engines with recorded sounds, each character is recorded separately and therefore a fluctuation in frequency is expected; Also when the sounds of single characters are merged into words and even longer audio signal, additional frequency components may be introduced. TTS is still very far away from producing natural speeches indistinguishable from those produced by human. As such, it cannot be trusted as a source of speech analysis.


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## xiaolijie

stellari said:


> For those engines that use purely synthesized sound, they absolutely cannot be trusted for analysis of Mandarin speech.


That is anchronistic, stellari! Although machines may be completely wrong, they are at least consistent and consistency means reliability. In the same way, we should start using Google translation for analysis of grammar, and all the unnecessary grammatical complications that have bothered us so far should therefore be gone!


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## Sibutlasi

stellari said:


> I would pronounce all five characters with exactly the same frequency.[...]


Thank you for your attention stellari. 

The  grammars/textbooks I referred to, however, do not say anything about the  T1+T1>T4+T1 tone sandhi rule being restricted to sequences starting  with "yi1", although they all cite "yi1" as a particularly frequent  example (just as they cite the "bù > bú" case when illustrating the  rule T4+T4>T2+T4); otherwise, I would not have posed my question in  the first place.

The first sentence of your third paragraph is, nevertheless, correct (as it is for all other tone languages I am aware of, too).  Absolute pitch is  irrelevant here. What matters is the tone/pitch intervals each speaker  uses, whether they start with "chu1" at D6, D5, C4#, C5#, etc. In my  'melodies' above I omitted the fact that they occur at different octaves  (4th to 6th), depending on e.g., whether the speakers are male or  female and their apparent age, among other factors (e.g. speed rate).

I was also  inclined to take T-T-S  data with a pinch of salt, for the reasons you  mention, but I have so far found that nearly all of the pronunciations I obtained from T-T-S did correspond rather  well to data subsequently elicited from native speakers, Pleco software, online pronouncing dictionaries, and other sources. As a case in point, the tone  interval sequence the Google Translator generated for "chu1 zu1 che1  si1 ji1" was exactly that of T-T-S Voice 1. above = D + C sharp + C + B +  B flat. 

Thank you for your personal data, anyway. Assuming you  have a good musical ear, that will add a  ninth (and so far unattested!) possibility to my current inventory of  tonal realizations for "chu1 zu1 che1  si1 ji". I will call it the 'zero choice', since it negates the general  validity of the tone adjustment rule T1+T1>T4+T1 and the existence of  any tone adjustment in such a case. 

Yet, I find it hard to  believe that the clear syntactic and semantic functions and constituency  groupings among the characters in "chu1 zu1 che1 si1 ji1" should have  no tone adjustment effect whatsoever on the pitch of its five syllables.  In theory, that should *not* happen, so I am curious about what other native speakers may have to say about the 'music' of such isotonous series. 

Thank you!


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## yuechu

Hello Sibutlasi,

If I understand correctly, you are talking about having listened to and transcribing the tones of 8 different synthesized 'native' Mandarin voices? (as I know that these programs/demos often have many voices per language and can sound quite real)
I haven't heard that program, but you may want to try listening to native speakers instead since, as you say, machines cannot always be 100% trusted in terms of accuracy.

First of all, as stellari pointed out, T1+T1 --> T4+T1 is not a general rule in Mandarin and only for 一 (to my knowledge). If anything, T1 + T1 may become T1 + T0/5(轻声) sometimes, but that's the only tone change I know of there (for standard Mandarin).

I searched for some videos of "出租车司机" and found the following two pronunciations which you can listen to:
1) This one is on CCTV and is very standard/official.
Example 1: CCTV-法治在线-20110611-广东揭阳杀害出租车司机案-1/2    (t=2m11s)
As stellari mentioned, it is the usual "monopitch" pronunciation. I think this is the most usual and would recommend it as well, especially for a beginner. But if I am not mistaken, I think it is often pronounced chu1zu1che1 si1ji1 with "chu1zu1che1" being higher and "si1ji1" dropping to a lower level (ex: 4 semitones) in 北方话/Northern dialect. I'm not sure about 南方。。
The "che1", I think, also may drop slightly at the end in anticipation of "si1ji1". As you may have noticed, tones in Chinese are all relative since everyone speaks at different pitch levels. Also, pitch "drops" or "falls" are also different from person to person.

2)
Example 2: 【飞碟说】出租车司机的爱恨情仇
It should be the first word you hear in the link (t=18s). It is not a good example (and probably shouldn't be here) because it isn't a typical 普通话 pronunciation. I think it is best to stick with the 'textbook' T1 T1 T1 T1 T1 pronunciation above.


Sibutlasi said:


> Yet, I find it hard to  believe that the clear syntactic and semantic  functions and constituency  groupings among the characters in "chu1 zu1 che1 si1 ji1" should have  no tone adjustment effect


I think it often has little to no tone adjustment but that it can, especially in informal speaking. The rhythm marks the largest difference.
I've noticed that the more standard/formal Chinese is, the less clearly polysyllabic words词 are differentiated through tone when speaking. Tones tend to follow more predictable patterns. (this is just my observation, as I have nothing to back it up.. ) I think the same thing happens in a lot of languages though (that the prosody tends to follow more predictable/regular patterns). Or perhaps I am just thinking of the news....

I hope the first video's "chu1zu1che1 si1ji1" will help you!



Sibutlasi said:


> 4.      G sharp + G sharp + A + B flat + F sharp
> 5.      A flat + A + B flat + B + F sharp
> 8.      B flat + B flat + B flat + A + C


I was originally thinking that some of the final notes (F sharp, F sharp, C) went up at the end. They all go down, right? (I think I read it wrong)

For a more precise analysis, I would suggest you use a sound analysis program/graphing the sounds so that you can see the changes in pitch visually. Even tones which are supposed to be level can sometimes change (rise or drop) in speech (especially informal speech) in anticipation of other syllables. (once again, just my observation) I don't think this noticeably happens very much though...

Also, I was trying to play your 'melodies' of 出租车司机 on the piano (since my mental 'sight reading' has become a bit rusty over the years) and... well, it's hard to compare to speech, I find. Once again, I think listening to actual sound files of native speakers will prove most helpful.

EDIT: Ah, now I know why you are comparing the pitches to notes on the piano--the "robot" voices do indeed give different pitches similar to what you would hear on a musical instrument. I just listened to Google Translate's voice and, although comprehensible, it does not sound like a native standard Mandarin speaker to me...


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## stellari

Seems to me your textbook(s) may have given you the wrong impression that T1+T1->T4+T1 is general rule. Most textbooks and online tutorials I have seen list this tone change as a special rule exclusively for 一.  

I listened to the speech produced by Google translator. It is intelligible, but sounds rather weird, funny, and machine-like. The pronunciation of 出租 is still okay, but when it comes to 车司机, the tone dropped too much that it sounds like...um...when a casette tape gets twisted. I also checked SitePal. For this particular phrase, only 'Lily' would almost pass for a natural human speech, and her tone has the lowest fluctuation among all eight.

I am not saying that tone fluctuation is forbidden here. For example, I might sometimes pronounce 司机 with a slightly lower pitch (at most a semitone) than 出租车 to indicate that it is a separate word. However, this is not tone sandhi as it is not mandatory. 

Like I said, TTS produces intelligible speech, but if you really want to know how real people would pronounce those sounds, you should trust native speakers more than computers.


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## YangMuye

xiaolijie said:


> That is anchronistic, stellari! Although machines may be completely wrong, they are at least consistent and consistency means reliability. In the same way, we should start using Google translation for analysis of grammar, and all the unnecessary grammatical complications that have bothered us so far should therefore be gone!


You must have misunderstood Google translation and have to apologize to her, xiaolijie. 

She was *NOT* taught a few "right", "consistent" grammar/phonology rules, rather, she learnt from *REAL* Chinese, e.g. through reading newspapers, novels, watching TVs and of course learning "textbooks"(corpus).  
We teach her how to learn rather than what we have learnt, and let herself develop her own grammar.

All problems are simplified into a statistics or probability problem, the answer depends on: whether she has seen the answer or not; how familiar she is with the pattern or similar paterns(combination of sound or words).
Her language ability improves over time.

So she must NOT be consistent and reliable, just like we natives.


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## Sibutlasi

baosheng said:


> If I understand correctly, you are talking about having listened to and transcribing the tones of 8 different synthesized 'native' Mandarin voices? (as I know that these programs/demos often have many voices per language and can sound quite real)[...]


Hello baosheng.

Thank you very much for your answer. I've listened to the videos you pointed me to, and, indeed, particularly in the first one, I notice very little deviation from the flat 'textbook' pronunciation. Unfortunately, I am not yet at the stage at which I could benefit from listening to videos like that and would never have thought of looking for one in which "chu1 zu1 che1 si1 ji1" was likely to be used. The chances of hitting on one would have been negligible. Also, I have no access to native Mandarin speakers here, so I must trust online dictionaries, recordings accompanying textbooks, the Google Translator, Text-to-Speech-like sites, etc. As to the (apparently) fake-rule T1+T1 > T4+T1, it is just another of many pseudo-rules (or inaccurately stated rules) I have already discovered (thanks to stellari and you, in this case).



baosheng said:


> I was originally thinking that some of the  final notes (F sharp, F sharp, C) went up at the end. They all go down,  right? (I think I read it wrong)[...]


Hello baosheng.

Thanks again. In general, pitch values gradually descend on the whole,  but melodies 2, 3, 6 and 8 rise in pitch on "ji1", which I found  surprising. Since, on general linguistic grounds, modifiers tend to be  more prominent than their modifieds (and complements more prominent than  their heads, etc.), I expected "chu1 zu1" to be pitch-wise more  prominent than "che1", "chu1 zu1 che1", in its turn, more prominent than  "si1 ji1", "chu1" more prominent that "zu1", and "si1" more prominent  than "ji1". The intonation of 1., hence, seemed to me fairly in tune  with general principles (although I would have expected sharper pitch  differences between modifier and modified); the other intonations I  transcribed in my original post all contained features I did not expect, particularly the  end-rise on "ji1" in several of them. As to the 'mono-pitch' rendition  that textbooks offer and now both stellari and yourself broadly endorse,  it seemed to me prima facie implausible, since it entails that  intonation is not made use of at all when it comes to signalling the  difference between modifiers and modifieds (heads). Other languages,  even those with fairly rigid syntax (e.g., English, German,...), do not  'waste' the obvious support intonation may offer in that respect, why  should Mandarin do? That's approximately the way I reasoned when I  decided to open this thread.
Now, in retrospect, I realize that  Chinese tones are lexically fixed, which possibly leaves no leeway to  manipulate pitch for the expression of syntactic-semantic function, and,  of course, I know that a rigid syntax alone suffices to signal the  functional+semantic status of constituents if necessary, but in that  case only the mono-pitch intonation 11111 should occur, don´t you think? The variation  the TTS voice generators did show (if faithful to the way various real  native speakers might intone that sequence, as I assumed), must then be 'free  variation', i.e., modulation left entirely to the taste (or intonational  needs) of individual speakers.  Of course that may well be true, but I  found, and still find, that conclusion aesthetically disappointing, .

Nevertheless,  I do not think it necessary or practical (at this stage, at least) to  use phonetics lab equipment to find out what native speakers do in full detail. As I had occasion to tell our  moderator just in case my questions suggested otherwise, I am *not* doing  research on Mandarin phonology (or any other aspect of the language, for  that matter). I am just trying to teach myself Mandarin in a rational  way, since in my little corner of the world I have no access to reliable  teachers. Since resources like the Google Translator or the  Text-to-Speech site are not as trustworthy as I thought, I will from  now on look for elementary level, but genuine, recordings by native  speakers, as you recommend, but I have not got there yet, .

Kind regards



stellari said:


> Seems to me your textbook(s) may have given you the wrong impression that T1+T1->T4+T1 is general rule. Most textbooks and online tutorials I have seen list this tone change as a special rule exclusively for 一.[...]


Indeed, so it seems. Textbooks and even standard reference grammars in English are full of inaccurately stated rules, so I'm no longer surprised to learn that this is just another. 
Of course I had noticed the shortcomings of the Google Translator (at all levels), but until now I had not tried to get from it anything but isolated words and the results seemed approximately comparable to those I could obtain from Pleco, the Oxford Talking Chinese Dictionary and other pronunciation dictionaries. It seems reliability decreases as soon as the input is a phrase or a sentence. Same for TTS, then? Anyway, I'll adopt 'Lily' as my favourite TTS informer.

Thank you!


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## Skatinginbc

Sibutlasi said:


> 8.      B flat + B flat + B flat + A + C


I wonder if that sequence came from a speaker who mistook 死鸡 "dead chicken" for 司机 "driver".  I would have difficulties understanding his/her speech, in other words.


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## SuperXW

Despite the complicated, professional question thread which I couldn't finish reading... x.x I really can't think of any case I would say or hear chu1zu1che1si1ji1 being pronounced in various tones... (as long as the speaker is speaking standard Mandarin.) For me, it's 11111 without question.

In general, people raise the pitch when they want to stress a certain word or character, but I don't see any part in 出租車司機 worthy to get a higher pitch than others...


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## Sibutlasi

SuperXW said:


> Despite the complicated, professional question  thread which I couldn't finish reading... x.x I really can't think of  any case I would say or hear chu1zu1che1si1ji1 being pronounced in  various tones...[...]



Thank you, SuperXW, for your categorical judgment! 

Despite what theories demand and theoreticians would like to hear, the  native speaker 'is always right'. If you systematically intone  "chu1zu1che1si1ji1" as a 'flat' monopitch 11111 sequence, then surely  I, as a learner, had better try to get used to doing the same myself,  particularly since other native speakers have manifested the same  opinion. I'm already trying, although my performance remains rather  unnatural !

Nevertheless, "chu1 zu1 che1 si1 ji1" is a fairly complex nominal  'compound', it has various internal constituents with different  syntactic and semantic functions, and, in principle, according to what  you say (= "In general, people raise the pitch when they want to stress a  certain word...") such differences should make certain syllables (e.g.,  "CHU1ZU1") get more stress than others (e.g. "che1"). Why? because  "chu1 zu1 che1" is a special kind of "che1", and it is important to stress what makes that kind of vehicle special, i.e., that it is a  vehicle for hire. 

When you say that you do not see "any part worthy of a higher pitch than others", is it that by 'stress' you mean just 'contrastive stress'? (cf.  A: Did  you speak to your sister at the funeral? B: "I SAW her, but did not  actually SPEAK to her", where verbs exceptionally get extra stress (> higher pitch)  because they are in explicit contrast). Now, I wonder: Would the first two words of  "chu1 zu1 che1" be more strongly stressed and higher in pitch than  "che1" if you wanted to convince a stingy wife that you got home by  public bus ("gong1gong2 qi4 che1"), rather than in an (expensive) taxi?  Also, if you wanted to say something like "I'm a BUS driver, not a mere TAXI  driver", would "gong1gong2 qi4 che1" and "chu1zu1 che1" get more stress  and higher pitch that the two tokens of "si1ji1" following each of them?

Thanks for your attention.

S.


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## SuperXW

Sibutlasi said:


> Nevertheless, "chu1 zu1 che1 si1 ji1" is a fairly complex nominal  'compound',[...]


You are right on this. There IS a case where we'd like to highlight chu1zu1 in this compound. I can think of the following scenario:
A: He's a driver? So he can drive the truck away?
B: He's only a CAB driver. He doesn't have the licence for driving a truck.

However, I think Northern Chinese are more used to alter the tones according to their emotions, while Taiwanese Mandarin speakers' voices are more "standardized". 

Also, don't forget Chinese has a list of "mood particles" and special structures to help express the feelings.
For "I SAW her, but did not actually SPEAK to her." Sometimes we do stress the words SAW and SPEAK, sometimes we don't, because each tone are supposed  to have a relatively fixed pitch range. We often add some particles to express the feeling (Words like "but" "actually" also have the function.):
For example, 我*看是看见*她了，*只不过*没和她说话*而已*。


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## Skatinginbc

SuperXW said:


> Northern Chinese are more used to alter the *tones* according to their emotions...each *tone* are supposed  to have a relatively fixed pitch range


I think the two "tones" you mentioned perhaps refer to different notions: one concerning "*intonation*" cross word boundaries (pitch variation that is NOT used to distinguish words), the other concerning "_*tone*_"  within the word boundary (pitch variation used to distinguish words).   In standard Mandarin, every word in 出租车司机 should be pronounced with the  "first tone" (i.e., "flat tone"--pitch remains steadily flat within each  word).  It is *fixed*, no tone sandhi, no  stress induced tonal changes.  Any deviation from the flat tone will  bring about either a sense of regional accent (e.g., a reduced tone for  机, perhaps someone from the north?) or a loss of intelligibility (e.g.,  si3ji1 "dead chicken" for si1ji "driver"). 

 If we start to  consider paralinguistic factors like "expressing emotion", "emphasis",  "contrast", etc, we are entering the territory of "intonation", which is  not just about pitch contour across words.  It involves other prosodic  features as well, such as loudness, tempo, rhythm (or syllable length),  and so on.  For instance, one may scream to a taxi driver "Hey, chu zu  che si jiiiiiii", where 机 receives a  higher pitch and prolonged  duration.  There are too many possibilities that can give reasons to  emphasize any segment of the phrase.  I think what is more useful for a  beginner is to learn "normal" (unmarked) speech. 车 is the head of the  noun phrase 出租车.  司机 is the head of the noun phrase 出租车司机.  司机 is a  person, not a machine 机.  What interesting about 出租车司机 is that two heads  (i.e., 车 and 司) meet each other right at the word boundary (出租车 + 司机).   If the Site Pal the OP referred to is this website (http://www.sitepal.com/ttswidgetdemo/ search "出租车司机"),  I think five out of the eight speakers place some sort of emphasis on 车  and 司.  For instance, the speaker "Liang" raises the pitch slightly for  车 and gives a little pause (technically not a pause, but a prolonged  duration) to separate the two words: 出租车 and 司机.  The speaker Linlin and  the speaker Yaling raise the pitch for 车 so dramatically that I would  consider their intonations "unnatural".  The speaker Lisheng raises the  pitch for 车 just so lightly in anticipation of the climax 司 (i.e.,  anticipatory assimilation in pitch).  The speaker Mei-Ling did  likewise.  Two (Lily and Ting-Ting) of the rest of the speakers keep 车  level with 出租.  The speaker Hui is an exception.  She treats 出租车司机 as  one single unit and gives 出 the highest pitch.


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## Sibutlasi

Thanks, SuperXW #15. The example you cite would indeed be another case  of 'contrastive stress', but no special 'emotions' need be involved. The  process works automatically, so to speak. The other example I cited (SAW  vs. SPEAK) was just for clarification in case my terminology was  unfamiliar. For present purposes I'm interested only in the Chinese  counterpart of "taxi-driver" and in how the syntax-semantics of "chu1zu1 che1 si1ji1" could affect the 'music', the tones, of its various syllables.

Regards

S.


Skatinginbc said:


> I think the two "tones" you mentioned perhaps refer to different notions:[...]


Thank you very much, Skatinginbc. I entirely  agree with the distinction you make in your first paragraph: only the  'unmarked' (default, non-contrastive,...) intonation of "chu1zu1 che1  si1ji1" is relevant to my question as originally intended. Since tone is  used to distinguish lexical items, obviously, speakers cannot in  general replace T1 with, say, T2 (unless there happens to be a 'lexical gap' just at that point, in which case no misunderstanding could arise anyway). Although I was led by a bad grammar to (wrongly) assume  that the rule T1+T1-> T4+T1 applied in general, not just to "yi1",  that much was clear to me from the start. That is why I brought in the 'music'  (i.e., the specific pitch associated with each token of T1 on the  corresponding lexemes within that compound) in my question: the way the various voices provided by the TTS  engine at Site Pal realized the 11111 sequence suggested A LOT of  'allotonic' variation (= very significant pitch differences that might  still be perceived by native speakers as 'irrelevant' - parallel to  'allophonic' variation within a 'phoneme'). Since the compound?  "[[[chu1zu]1che1]] [si1ji1]]" is realized by the TTS 'voices' completely out of  context, such absolute pitch differences could not be attributed to  contrast, focus, or any other discourse or contextually-determined  factor. If they occur (and they are not wrong), they must be 'allotonic' variation of the first  type, within the fixed tone each lexical item has. Of course, we  learners do not know how much pitch variation is allowed before native  speakers start understanding something else. 

[By the way: thanks for letting me know that the 'head' of "si1ji1" is "si1", not "ji1", but that is a different issue].

S.


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## SuperXW

Skatinginbc said:


> I think the two "tones" you mentioned perhaps refer to different notions:[...]


I knew I have problems on terminologies, just I was not sure how to express my exact idea in English. Thank you for pointing them out. 
我想表达的是：一二三四声是不能乱变的，但是整个基调是会随着感情而变化的，就像音乐中的G大调，C小调什么的……我也不知术语怎么表达。
这方面感觉北方人更随意，重要的字就提得很高，不重要的就沉下来，同时也有更多的「轻声」。而台湾人则相对标准，无论是平声、上扬或降调，都比较到位。


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## Skatinginbc

Sibutlasi said:


> the way the various voices provided by the TTS   engine at Site Pal realized the 11111 sequence suggested A LOT of   'allotonic' variation


No.  That's not true.  There is little  allotonic variation.  For instance, the Speaker Hui at Site Pal seems to  pronounce 出租车司机 with a "G, F, D#,  D, D" melody.  If you pay attention to each syllable, you shall realize  that there is little pitch variation within each syllable.  It is like  if you play "G, F, D#, D, D" on a piano, there will be no pitch change  within each  note.   Every key on a regular piano is what Chinese call a "flat tone"  because once you press a key to make a sound (no matter it is A, B#, C,  or whatever), the pitch of that sound will stay the same until the  end.  Your transcribing each syllable into a music note in your original  post reflects the fact that in your mind each syllable can be  represented by a music note.  And that fact should have spoken volume to  you that every syllable represents a "flat tone" that has a constant,  unvarying pitch like a music note or a key on the piano.


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## tarlou

Skatinginbc said:


> No.  That's not true.[...]


I'm actually not sure what is going on in this long thread . Just to clarify, the 1st tone in standard Chinese does have pitch requirement, and a flat tone with a wrong pitch can sound like a different tone that does not exist in standard Chinese. In other dialects this is important, for example, 天津话 has two falling tones (阴平 and 去声). There are also many dialects/languages with several different flat tones in both north and south.
For the sound by Hui at Pal, I can't hear significant pitch variations even between different syllables. Only 司 is slightly off, but Skatinginbc marks it with the same pitch as 机. I'm bad at music and can't figure out the exact pitch at all. Maybe the extent of variation matters here, and slight lower or higher flat will only be considered as an intonation/stress/emotion/inaccuracy.


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## Skatinginbc

Hi, Tarlou,
Your post made me reread Post #18.  And I just realized that the OP seems to be  interested in the relative pitch distance between syllables, rather than  the intra-syllablic pitch contour I discussed in Post #20, which focused on OP's choice of word "allotonic" and therefore took the wrong  direction.  
The conclusion of your post seems to be: Not a lot of  variation is permitted with regard to the relative pitch distance  between two adjacent first-tone syllables.  And I agree with you.  To my ear, the permissible interval between two adjacent first-tone syllables cannot exceed a "major second" (two semitones); otherwise, it would trigger a sense of "abnormality" (accent, stress, or inaccuracy).  The speaker LinLin at SitePal has a jump of "minor third" (three semitones) from 租 to 车 and I found it "unnatural" (as if speaking with a strange regional accent).
司 of the speaker Hui sounds slightly off perhaps due to our cognitive need to either separate 出租车 and 司机 or at least keep them at the same level.  As I said in a previous post, Hui is the only speaker that pronounces 出租车司机 with a falling intonation.


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## Sibutlasi

Skatinginbc said:


> No.  That's not true.[...]


I think you have misunderstood me: Of course within each syllable, as intoned by each speaker, pitch changes are small, and difficult to quantify without proper equipment. What I meant was that if you compare the absolute pitch with which each of the eight Mandarin speakers at the Site Pal TTS realizes T1 on the same syllable of "chu1zu1che1si1ji1" there is considerable variation, and as a consequence the intervals between any two syllables often do not coincide, although certain regularities are detectable, for example there is a clear descending pattern that several speakers use. [By the way, in my post I did not list the 'melodies' in the order the speakers are listed in the TTS window. I tried to order them a bit to emphasize the existence of several groups of intonation patterns. That may cause discrepancy if somebody replicates my little 'experiment' and compares my 'melodies' with their own. I would have to repeat the process in order to restore the correct pairing of melody-speaker, but it probably is no longer worthwhile the effort].


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## Skatinginbc

Sibutlasi said:


> I think you have misunderstood me


Didn't I just say so in post #22? 


Sibutlasi said:


> there is a clear descending pattern that several speakers use.


I don't see such pattern.  Can you please name those speakers so we can judge it ourselves?


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## Sibutlasi

Skatinginbc said:


> Didn't I just say so in post #22?
> 
> I don't see such pattern.  Can you please name those speakers so we can judge it ourselves?



  Let me quote you in one of your earlier posts: "For instance, the Speaker Hui at Site Pal seems to  pronounce 出租车司机 with a "G, F, D#,  D, D" melody." Don´t you call that a descending pattern? The Google Translator offers another. Other speakers do produce descending patterns on "chu1 zu1 che1", one suddenly has a sharp rise on "che1", others have a rise on "ji1", etc. If you have listened to the Mandarin speakers at Site Pal's free TTS and you do not notice any significant differences in intonation between the way they realize the 11111 sequence, we are wasting our time. Let's forget it.


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## Skatinginbc

Sibutlasi, the reason I am so concerned about your "descending  pattern" is that other learners of Chinese may read this thread and  learn from it.  I am afraid they would take the "descending pattern" as the norm.    


Sibutlasi said:


> "For instance, the  Speaker Hui...." Don´t you call that a descending pattern?


What I disagree with is your claim that there is a "clear descending pattern that _*several *_speakers use". I said in #16 that Hui is an exception.  She treats 出租车司机 as  one single  unit and gives 出 the highest pitch (and the pitch keeps dropping from  there).  I said again in #24 that she is the only speaker that  pronounces 出租车司机 with a falling intonation (a steadily falling  intonation till the end).  


Sibutlasi said:


> The Google Translator offers another.


I  thought we were discussing only those eight speakers at SitePal.  You  can pick only samples that agree with your hypothesized pattern from one  billion of Chinese speakers and get quite a few number, but the result  obtained from the pick-and-choose method is often not representative of  the norm.       


Sibutlasi said:


> Other speakers do produce  descending patterns on "chu1 zu1 che1", one suddenly has a sharp rise  on "che1", others have a rise on "ji1", etc.


So the so-called  "descending pattern" applies to only two or three syllables, rather  than to the whole phrase 出租车司机?  In that case, the term "descending  pattern" can be quite misleading, can't it?   


Sibutlasi said:


> you do not notice any significant differences in intonation between the  way they realize the 11111 sequence


That's not true.  I _did_ notice significant differences in intonation among those Site Pal speakers.  And I have described my observation in Post #16.


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