ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 is the introduction of this book. It discusses the purpose, methodology, data sources, and background information necessary for this study. In this chapter, I present a brief description of the phonological system of the Fuzhou dialect, including its tonal and segmental inventories, syllable types, and major phonological rules that are relevant to the discussion in this book including Phonological Tone Sandhi (TS), Morphological Tone Sandhi (MTS), Final Alternation (FA), Final Change (FC), and Initial Consonant Lenition (CL). I also provide a critical survey of the prosodic phonology theory, introducing its history and recent development, its basic tenets, and outstanding issues that will be further explored in this book, such as the weakened Strict Layer Hypothesis (SLH), the status of the clitic group, and approaches to phonological phrasing.
