Mair's hypothesis on tonal repetition
In his major July 1 speech celebrating the 100th anniversary of the CCP, one of Xi Jinping's many pronouncements featuring "blood" was this:
yù xuè fèn zhàn
浴血奋战/ 浴血奮戰
lit., "bathe blood energetic / rousing / fierce battle / fight"
i.e., "fight hard in bloody battles; a bloody fight"
It is hard to pronounce four 4th tones in a row. Indeed, in normal speech, it is virtually impossible to do so. When four 4th tones occur in succession, some sort of natural sandhi will arise to obviate that condition. Most people I know who pronounce this quadrisyllabic expression will convert the third syllable to a light first tone.
Aside from the consonants, vowels, and tones, when one begins the study of Mandarin, one of the first things one learns about the pronunciation of the language is that you cannot have two 3rd tones in succession: the first one has to become a 2nd tone, e.g., Nǐ hǎo –> Ní hǎo 你好 ("How are you?").
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