According to Wiedenhof's A Grammar of Mandarin, page 25,
When following a frst or a second tone, and simultaneously preceding a non-neutral tone, a second tone is pronounced with a high level pitch 55 (high to high), i.e. as a frst tone. This diference can be represented in Pinyin: ānmián yào ~ ānmiān yào ‘sleeping pills’.
Does "represent" here mean that, instead of the citation/lexical tones, the new tones after tone sandhi can be used as well?
ānmiān yào
is never a valid pronunciation in any authoritative mandarin text book that I ever read.ānmián yào
is the only pronunciation. So calledtone sandhi
do exist in everyday Mandarin but this specific case is highly likely to be just some very localized accent that's been misinterpreted by the author.