Like all Chinese varieties, the Fuzhou dialect is a
tonal language, and has extensive
sandhi rules in the
initials,
rimes, and
tones. These complicated rules make the Fuzhou dialect one of the most difficult Chinese varieties.
Tones There are seven original
tones in the Fuzhou dialect, compared with the eight tones of
Middle Chinese: The sample characters are taken from the
Qī Lín Bāyīn. More modern studies have also been done in the late 20th century and early 21st centuries, including an acoustically quantified set of data for the citation tones. In
Qī Lín Bāyīn, the Fuzhou dialect is described as having eight tones, which explains how the book got its title (
Bāyīn means "eight tones"). That name, however, is somewhat misleading, because Ĭng-siōng () and Iòng-siōng () are identical in
tone contour; therefore, only seven tones exist. Ĭng-ĭk and Iòng-ĭk (or so-called
entering tone) syllables end with either
velar stop or a
glottal stop . However, they are both now realized as a glottal stop, though the two
phonemes maintain distinct sandhi behavior in connected speech. Besides those seven tones listed above, two new tonal values, "˨˩" (Buáng-ĭng-ké̤ṳ, ) and (Buáng-iòng-ké̤ṳ, ) occur in connected speech (see
Tonal sandhi below). Little discussed in the existing literature, there is some evidence that Fuzhou uses non-modal phonation with certain tones: creaky for
ĭng-ké̤ṳ,
ĭng-ĭk,
iòng-ké̤ṳ, and breathy for
siōng-siăng. This has been shown to be perceptually relevant for tonal identification.
Tonal sandhi The rules of
tonal sandhi in the Fuzhou dialect are complicated, even compared with those of other Min dialects. When two or more than two morphemes combine into a word, the tonal value of the last morpheme remains stable but in most cases those of the preceding morphemes change. For example, "", "" and "" are words of iòng-ĭk () with the same tonal value , and are pronounced , , and , respectively. When combined as the phrase "" (Independence Day), "" changes its tonal value to , and "" changes its to , therefore the pronunciation as a whole is . The two-syllable tonal sandhi rules are shown in the table below (the rows give the first syllable's original citation tone, while the columns give the citation tone of the second syllable): Ĭng-ĭk-gák () are ĭng-ĭk () syllables ending with
-k and ĭng-ĭk-ék () are those with a final
-h . This distinction made between the glottal stop and the -k is said to have been maintained in the literary readings of characters until quite recently. Although the effect of the historical tonal registers from Middle Chinese is clear in Lianjiang, the Fuzhou tonal sandhi system has deviated from the older pattern, in that the tone iòng-ké̤ṳ 陽去, which is from the historical "Yang" tonal register, now follows the sandhi rules for the "Yin" register; and the sandhi tone ĭng-ĭk-gák 陰入乙 , which comes from the historical "Yin" register, follow the sandhi rules for the merged "Shang" tone. The tonal sandhi rules of more than two syllables display further complexities. For three-syllable domains: Four-syllable words can be treated as two sequential two-syllable units, and undergo two-syllable tone sandhi accordingly; in faster speech, the first two syllables are reduced to a half dark departing tone, and the remaining two syllables undergo two-syllable tone sandhi. A domain of four syllables is the maximum, with anything larger broken down to into smaller domains. Note that although and are generally pronounced the same in isolation, realized as a final
glottal stop , they cause drastically different effects on the initials that follow. They also differ in how common it is to drop them in natural linked speech. These have been called prelinked and floating glottal stops respectively in academic literature. As has been mentioned above, there are theoretically two different entering tonal codas in the Fuzhou dialect: and . However, for most Fuzhou dialect speakers, those two codas are only distinguishable when in the
tonal sandhi or
initial assimilation.
Close/Open rimes Some rimes come in pairs in the above table: the one to the left represents a close rime (), while the other represents an open rime (). This vowel alternation of close/open rimes is closely related with the tones. In single syllables, the tones of ĭng-bìng (), siōng-siăng (), iòng-bìng () and iòng-ĭk () have close rimes, while ĭng-ké̤ṳ (), ĭng-ĭk () and ĭòng-ké̤ṳ () have open rimes. In connected speech, an open rime shifts to its close counterpart in the
tonal sandhi. For instance, "" (hók) is a ĭng-ĭk syllable and is pronounced and "" (ciŭ) a ĭng-bìng syllable with the pronunciation of . When these two syllables combine into the word "" (hók-ciŭ, Fuzhou), "" changes its tonal value from to and, simultaneously, shifts its rime from to , so the phrase is pronounced . In contrast, in the word "" (Dṳ̆ng-guók, China), "" is a ĭng-bìng syllable and therefore its close rime never changes, though it does change its tonal value from to in tonal sandhi. As with
initial assimilation, the closing of open rimes in connected speech is not as compulsory as tone sandhi. It has been described as "a sort of switch that flips on and off to indicate different things", so its presence or absence can indicate different meanings or different syntactic functions.
Other phonological features Neutral tone The
neutral tone is attested in the Fuzhou dialect, as well as being found in the
Southern Min group and in varieties of
Mandarin Chinese, including Beijing-based
Standard Mandarin. It is commonly found in some modal particles, aspect markers, and some question-forming negative particles that come after units made up of one tone sandhi domain, and in some adverbs, aspect markers, conjunctions etc. that come before such units. These two types, the post-nucleus and the pre-nucleus neutral tone, exhibit different tone sandhi behavior. Disyllabic neutral tone words are also attested, as are some inter-nuclei neutral tones, mainly connected to the use of 蜀
siŏh // in verbal reduplication. ==Vocabulary==