Sentence-final particles (SFPs) in Mandarin Chinese realize the heads of three projections in the rigidly ordered head-final CP ‘Low CP < ForceP < AttitudeP’. Only the highest projection AttitudeP encodes discourse-related properties, whereas ForceP encodes the sentence-type (interrogative, imperative). Low Cs interact with properties of the TP-internal extended verbal projection and are obligatory when acting as (non-default) anchors. They play an important role in determining the temporal interpretation and finiteness in Mandarin Chinese and can therefore no longer be neglected by studies addressing these issues. There is no evidence for an “incremental” acquisition “up the tree” of the different projections in the split CP nor for the acquisition of TP prior to CP, as postulated by the cartographic approach.