The relationship among tones, intonation and sentence-final particles was first studied in Feng Shengli (2015), in which Feng put forward the Intonation-Particle Hypothesis (I-P Hypothesis). This book interprets and verifies the I-P Hypothesis from several aspects. First, in the part of theoretical foundation, this book introduces in detail what is I-P Hypothesis and the interdependence and interaction among tones, intonation and sentence-final particles; second, in the part of empirical demonstration, this book verifies the I-P Hypothesis based on ancient Chinese, Chinese ethnic minority languages, and the Bantu languages in Africa. The I-P Hypothesis will have (or have already had) significant influence on the studies of the history of Chinese language and syntax, and the appearance of sentence-final particles will become an important mark for observing the evolution of language types. 

Wang Cong, assistant professor in the Department of Chinese Language Studies at The Education University of Hong Kong, postdoctoral scholar at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, PhD in linguistics from INALCO and PhD in literature from Shanghai Normal University. Dr. Wang’s research interests include Chinese syntax, linguistic typology, and language contact. She has published one academic book and more than 10 academic papers in core journals.

Wang Jue is a professor in the School of Humanities at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, whose research orientation is modern Chinese grammar, and who has been engaged in systematic research on modal particles over the past ten years.

Yeshes Vodgsal Atshogs is a professor and PhD supervisor in the Chinese Department of Nankai University, whose research interests include language contact and convergence, Sino-Tibetan languages and historical relations, Tibetan phonetics and prosody, etc.

Feng Shengli is a professor and PhD supervisor in the Chinese Department of The Chinese University of Hong Kong and a Chang Jiang Scholar of BLCU, whose research interests include prosodic grammar, register grammar, historical syntax, prosody of poetry and CFL teaching, etc.