The tone sandhi phenomenon, where tones are modified depending on their neighbors, is usually exemplified in Chinese by the changes to consecutive third tones, such as in 洗澡 or 雨傘, but there are other cases to consider, none of which I am good at performing.
Stumbled upon this newscaster who is bold with tones, as he describes today’s earthquake. Listen to his pronunciation of 亂七八糟 and 壓傷, which both include consecutive first tones. As best as I can tell, he is converting his initial first tones into second tones. I don’t think this usually done by native speakers (to this degree?), but I’m happy to be corrected by anyone knowledgeable in the matter.
I’m not a native speaker, but Mandarin has been my main everyday language for quite a few years. But just to reassure you that there’s no secret sandhi going on in this case, I asked native speaker from Taiwan to listen carefully to the report and they confirmed that the qi ba zao was first first first tone and ya shang first first tone.
The reporter does seem to emphasise shang and zao somewhat, so perhaps that’s what threw you off with the tones in this case.
Thanks. If you’re saying he’s not converting any of these first tones to rising tones, I can go along with that.
I still believe that his first tones are non uniform in pitch; that is, they are functioning as first tones, but are pronounced at different pitch frequencies, which I’ve heard from a veteran Chinese teacher is sometimes done.
That’s what I heard as well, all first tones but 糟 and 傷 seemed a bit louder to me (Is that what the OP was referring to as different pitch frequencies?)
I’m grateful that Mandarin has very little tone sandhi; I’ve given up on Taiwanese because I can’t wrap my head around all the tone changes in that language.
