The Interaction of Tones and Vowels in Fuzhou

The goal of this paper is to investigate the coincident changes of tones and vowels in Fuzhou. There has been considerable work on understanding the phonetic effects of segments on tone and on the influence of tone on segments (e.g. Maddieson 1977, 1984, 1997, Zee 1984 and others). Such phonetic effects are often the consequence of speech production and as such are relatively imperceptible. However, less attention has been given to effects of tone and segments that are not automatic phonetic changes, but rather changes that result from the phonology. In this paper I present data from the Fuzhou dialect of Chinese. I argue that the phonological tone is responsible for the segmental effects, rather than the reverse, but that the phonological segments may nonetheless play a role in the tonal outputs. I argue this point using acoustic data from Fuzhou.