The interaction of tones and vowels in Fuzhou

Abstract

In this paper I examine the tone-vowel interaction in the Fuzhou dialect of Chinese and present new data to shed light on whether this is a phonetic or phonological effect. I present normalized F0 contours for each of the seven citation tones, and illustrate the quality of vowel changes. I then discuss previous approaches to the phonological treatment of Fuzhou vowel alternations. I argue that the phonological tone is responsible for the rather catastrophic segmental effects, rather than the reverse, but that the phonological segments may nonetheless play a role in the tonal outputs. I will argue this point using data from four areas: (i) the vowels, (ii) the phonation, (iii) the sandhi tones and (iv) the duration. However I also note that phonetic effects may influence the tonal output, illustrating with the effect of final plosives on duration.