Accidental gaps in Mandarin Chinese tones

Mandarin is a tone language with four phonemic tones (i.e., high-level Tone 1 [55]), rising Tone 2 [35], falling-rising Tone 3 [214], and falling Tone 4 [51] and with the maximum (C)(G)V(G)/(C) syllable structure. However, not all syllables can be combined with each of the tones (i.e., accidental gaps). For example, the syllable [tsʰu] is allowed to be combined with T1 ([tsʰu]55 “coarse”), T4 ([tsʰu]51 “vinegar”), but not T2 and T3. A calculation of all the 391 allowable syllables showed that there are 131, 185, 155, 110 accidental gaps in each of the four tones. A one-way chi-square test revealed that the accidental gaps in T2 were over-represented (stats here). A further investigation into these gaps in T2 according to different syllable types (CV: 52, CVN: 43, CGV: 38, and CGVN: 29) showed that these gaps were marginally under-represented in CGVN (stats here). We attributed these findings partially to the marked status of contour tones and to the typological preference for complex tonal targets to complex rimes due to their inherent longer durations (cf. Zhang 2001).