In which pitches do I pronounce several first tones in a sequence?

Question

For a while now I've been noticing and trying to figure out how to correctly pronounce several first tone characters in a row. Examples:

機車 jīchē 公車 gōngchē

The speech synthesis of Quizlet pronounces 機車:

High pitch
4 ji
3    che
2
1
Low pitch

That is, the first syllable is pronounced at a higher pitch than the second. But in school, when my teacher speaks slowly I notice she pronounces:

High pitch
4 ji che
3
2
1
Low pitch

At which pitches should I pronounce several first tones in a sequence?

Answer 1

According to some researches there is a declination effect (pitch lowering) in Mandarin Chinese. Fundamental frequency (F0) of a speach is decreasing as a speach goes on, with greater downsteps of pitch at the beginning of phrase.

In sequence of first tones, e.g. "老王蒸冬瓜" (...zhēng dōngguā) the first syllable [zhēng] has higher pitch then the last one [guā] in native speakers' speach.

Here are some examples:

From "Declination in Mandarin" (Chilin Shih)
Bell Labs – Lucent Technologies, 1997

This study shows overall lowering of pitch from start of the sentence to its ending. The sentence that was used (in some variations) is "老王蒸冬瓜" [Lǎo Wáng zhēng dōngguā] (so you can see here several first tones in a sequence)

There were four speakers: two females and two males, two from northern China and two from Taiwan). And all fourspeakers show a clear decline in tone 1 pitch values.

This figure shows F0 (tone 1) declination for different speakers (B, C, D) on different sentences (solid and dotted lines):

From "Downstep and Pitch Range of High-Low Tones in Chinese" (Maolin Wang and Wei Xiong)
International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, 2015

This study uses only sequences of HL tones (High and Low tones, only tone 1 and tone 3 used), the patterns are HLHL, HLHLHL, ... And the authors also come to the result that there is a prominent gradual lowering of H tones strongly resembling downstep throughout the utterances.

To answer your question

When you (or children in China) study Chinese, intonation is supposed to be perfect (but the world in not perfect). So you study "how it should be" (5555555* - tone 1 pitch level) and later it is turning to "speak as everybody does" (5443333...** - tone 1 pitch level)

---

* five-bar scale of pitches is used here, going from lowest (1), to highest (5)

** scale is not correct, just to show declination of the first tone!!! Five-bar scale is not enough to show correct declination, see pics for correct scale

Answer 2

It could be “theory versus practice”. I noticed this happening after a year or so of learning Chinese, mostly self-study. AFAIK it's quite common in everyday normal speech. I remember a textbook with an audio CD where the speaker very clearly put the 鲜 in 新鲜 about a tone lower than the 新 (here by "tone" I mean "a whole tone; the sum of two semitones" in the sense of Western classical music).

There are many optional tone change rules in Mandarin: in this blog post Olle Linge describes a few but he doesn't mention this particular case (of successive first tones).

I like this example he gives:

When several second tones appear in a row, the middle one (and sometimes also the first one if speech is very fast) turns into flat, high tones. For example, my name ought to be líng (35) yún (35) lóng (35), but turns into líng (35) yún (55) lóng (35).

I suspect that this case (successive first tones pronounced lower than the first first tone) is a good example of such an optional tone change rule.

Answer 3

Your teacher is correct they should both be high and flat - but technically it’s be 55 not 44.

The only time it might sound like there is a drop on the second character is if it is a first tone followed by a neutral tone.

Answer 4

Here are two examples of sentences made up of first tone characters:

1. 今天吃蒸包（子）。
2. 今天喝高汤。

You can read out loud examples in 1st tones (like a TV announcer) without sounding weird at all.

With native speakers, things don't follow strict rules. For example, a Beijing native might add an "er" here and there or drag out a particular sound so that he/she would not sound monotone.

If you are learning the language, learn it whichever way you can--mimic your teacher or follow a recording. As you get deeper into the language, especially once you have spent some time among native speakers, you will naturally figure these things out--and depending on which part of China you are, you may figure things out quite differently.

Answer 5

Really depend on multiple fatcors, first of all if you want to accent a concept or a word you must mantain every single tone at the same pitch, but normally speching when you pronunnce multiple first tones, the first tone gradually low each tim you pronunce it.