Fuzhou Neutral Tone—Fallouts of Tone sandhi Domain
福州中性调—变调的附带结果
Zhuqing Li

Abstract 摘要

Neutral tone is for the most part associated with the study of northern dialects. While it appears to be mainly a lexical phenomenon in the northern dialects, it is more of a syntactic and phonological feature in the Fuzhou dialect. The present paper is a syntactic analysis of neutral tone in the Fuzhou dialect. The paper examines occurrences of Fuzhou neutral tone in pre-nucleus, post-nucleus and inter-nucleus positions. The study shows that Fuzhou neutral tone is not only a syntactic phenomenon, but also a phonological phenomenon. Syntactically, the post-verbal neutral tone words include particles and complements of various kinds. The pre-verbal neutral tones are mostly adverbs. Neutral tone also occurs between two phrases each with its own tone sandhi nucleus. Phonologically, pre-nucleus neutral tone can only occur in antepenultimate position, while the post-nucleus neutral tone does not have this restriction. Both pre- and post-nucleus neutral tones can only occur outside of tone sandhi domain.

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 TONE SANDHI DOMAIN AND NUCLEI

2.1 POST-NUCLEUS NEUTRAL TONES
2.1A. FULL NEUTRAL TONE
2.1B. SEMI-NEUTRAL TONE
2.1C. POST-NUCLEUS NEUTRAL TONES IN A SERIES
2.2 PRE-NUCLEUS NEUTRAL TONES
2.3. SUMMARY OF THE ANALYSIS

3.0. DISYLLABIC NEUTRAL TONE WORDS:
3.1. POST-VERBAL NUCLEUS DISYLLABIC NEUTRAL TONE WORDS
3.2. PRE-VERBAL NUCLEUS NEUTRAL TONES

4.0. INTER-NUCLEI NEUTRAL TONES
4.1. VERBAL REDUPLICATION
4.2. VERBAL EXPRESSION IN SERIES

5.0 PHONOLOGICAL NEUTRAL TONE?

6.0 CONCLUSION