Fuzhou Dialect Phonology
福州方言音表
Compiled and Edited by James Campbell

Vowels in Fuzhou Min are split two ways: into lax and tense. These bifurcation is based on the tone grouping so that each underlying vowel, diphthong or triphthong has at least two surface realizations depending on the tone, thus making a pair. In each pair, the tense vowels have [+high, +front] features and the lax vowels, [+low, +back]. Tense vowels only occur with 陰平 Yinping, 陽平 Yangping, 上聲 Shang, and 陽入 Yangru. Lax vowels only occur with 陰去 Yinqu, 陽去 Yangqu, and 陰入 Yinru. In tone sandhi (disyllabic sequence), lax vowels do not change in the second syllable position, but they do undergo sandhi in the first syllable position, in which case these lax vowels become corresponding tense vowels where applicable. Under no environment do tense vowels become lax vowels. In other words, lax vowels follow the conditions of the syllable and tone whereas tense vowels are fixed. It is important however to distinguish the two clearly and not assume that tense vowels are the underlying form and lax vowels are merely a surface representation based on environment.

Researchers of Fuzhou Min group each tense and lax vowels into pairs and account for each pair as a single rhyme for three reasons:

• From the phonological rules of Fuzhou Min, we can see that when lax vowels undergo tone sandhi, these vowels change along with tone to tense vowels.
  

  • Here are some tense vowel examples:
    

    Yinping	Yangping	Shang	Yangru
    風 huŋ55	魂 huŋ53	粉 huŋ33	佛 huʔ5
    風氣 huŋ55-53 khɛi212	魂魄 huŋ53-21 phɔyʔ24	粉牌 huŋ33-21 p-mɛ53	佛經 huʔ5-55 ki55

  • Here are some lax vowel examples:
    

    Yinqu	Yangqu	Yinru
    訓 houŋ212	分 houŋ242	福 houʔ24
    訓導 huŋ212-53 t-no33	分數 huŋ242-53 s-nou212	福州 huʔ24-21 tsieu55

  As we can see from the first example, the four characters have tense vowels, and while undergoing tone sandhi in first character position, these vowels keep their original tenseness. However, in the second example we can see how the lax vowels of these three characters each become tense when occurring in first-character position tone sandhi.

• The four ancient tonal categories are split into seven contours in modern Fuzhou, into which tense and lax vowels have a complementary distribution: tense vowels into four tones and lax vowels into 3. The modern rhymes coincide well with the ancient rhyme categories. Here are examples from the 侵 and 庚 rhymes:
  
  

  	Tense				Lax
  	陰平 (1A)	陽平 (1B)	上聲 (2A)	陽入 (4B)	陰去 (3A)	陽去 (3B)	陰入 (1A)
  侵韻	金 kiŋ55	琴 kʰiŋ53	錦 kiŋ33	及 kiʔ5	禁 kɛiŋ212	妗 kɛiŋ242	急 kɛiʔ24
  庚韻	京 kiŋ55		景 kiŋ33		敬 kɛiŋ212	競 kɛiŋ242	戟 kɛiʔ24

• When compared with neighboring dialects, the Gu3tian2 dialect of the Fuzhou dialect branch, the lax and tense vowels do not correspond to the tones.
  
  
  

  Tones