This book answers some common professional questions in the field of study of Chinese prosodic grammar from several aspects, including questions about prosodic grammar as an academic discipline, questions about the methodology of research on prosodic grammar, some conceptual questions about prosodic grammar, questions about the technical operation of prosodic grammar, and questions about the fields involved (such as “prosodic literature” and “written style”). Based on his personal experience, the author strives to answer and explain the academic circles’ questions, doubts or criticisms about the above issues in simple terms. The questions and answers in this book involve not only novice learners’ FAQs and researchers’ professional questions, but also problems which the study of prosodic grammar has faced in history or during its development as an academic discipline. 

Feng Shengli, 1995 Ph.D. in linguistics, University of Pennsylvania, worked as a teaching assistant and associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures of the University of Kansas during 1994-2003 and as a professor of Chinese as an applied subject and dean of the Chinese division in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations of Harvard University. In 2005, Mr. Feng was offered the position of a Chang Jiang Scholar of Beijing Language and Culture University. Since 2007, Feng has been a special-term professor and Ph.D. tutor of Beijing Language and Culture University, and is now a professor in the Chinese Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and a subeditor of Language and Linguistics. His research interests include prosodic grammar, stylistic grammar, Chinese exegetics, historical syntax, and prosodic stylistics. He has published several academic books, including Chinese Prosodic Syntax, A Collection of Papers on Chinese Prosodic Studies, and Expressions of Written Chinese, as well as more than 100 academic papers.