Mandarin Neutral Tone as a Phonologically Low Tone

This paper has examined the Mandarin neutral tone values in phonological terms. Essentially, it has developed a unified analysis accounting for the surface values of Tone 0. In doing so, the analysis accounts for why Tone 0 behaves differently after Tone 3. Or, why does it rise after Tone 3 but falls after the other three tones? It is argued that Tone 0 is phonologically a low tone with a low pitch target. When preceded by another low tone-Tone 3, Tone 0 is raised by a Neutral Tone Sandhi Rule (0TS) triggered by an Obligatory Contour Principle that disallows identical L tones across a syllable boundary. Finally, this paper reveals the connection between 0TS and the well-known Third Tone Sandhi process of Mandarin.