Whether and how do mandarin sandhied tone 3 and underlying tone 2 differ?

One interesting linguistic question has beenwhether and how the characteristics of sandhiedTone 3 are similar to or different from an underlyingTone 2 in Mandarin. In this study, we took a microview to investigate the vowel height, duration, andrime structure in syllables, and their influence on thedegree of Tone 3 sandhi through native speakers'speech production and perception. It was found thatvowel height and duration played important roles inshaping the F0 contour of the sandhied Tone 3 inproduction. As to perception, sandhied Tone 3syllables with low vowels and longer duration weremore likely to be perceived as Tone 3.