Acknowledgments
A volume of the scope and complexity of The Cambridge History of Linguistics would not have been feasible without the support, cooperation, and contributions of many people and institutions over the long time it has taken for it to be prepared and published. In addition to acknowledging the importance and excellence of the contributors to this volume (see the List of Contributors), we take great pleasure in thanking our spouses, Ronald Breiger and Jack Burston, for their patience throughout this long gestation period, for expert advice when we had issues with our computers, software, and other equipment, and for reading and discussing with us the Introduction to Part III. We also want to thank those who have read that Introduction and given us very helpful and insightful comments about it, especially Alessandro Duranti, Frederick Newmeyer, and Elizabeth Traugott.
As explained in the Preface, Kate Brett at Cambridge University Press played a vital role in setting the CHL into motion, but she eventually took on other duties; and John Joseph was unable to continue with editorial work connected with this project after it was launched. The two of us, Linda Waugh and Monique Monville-Burston, are grateful to one another that we decided to continue with publishing this book, with each of us taking the lead on certain aspects of the tasks, but always working together collaboratively. We have also worked very productively with Kate’s successor, Helen Barton, Commissioning Editor for language and linguistics and in particular for the Handbooks in Linguistics series, the format of which she suggested we use as a template for the CHL, even though it is in the Histories series. We would like to acknowledge her expert and thoughtful guidance, as well as her diligence and patience in ensuring that this volume would come to fruition. We also convey our thanks to Isabel Collins (Helen’s editorial assistant), copy-editor, Kay McKechnie, indexer, Amala Gobiraman, and content manager, Laura Simmons.
We want to recognize the various editorial assistants from the PhD program in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLAT) at the University of Arizona who helped with the task of formatting the chapters and establishing the list of references: Drs. Bryan Meadows, Kristin Helland, Timothy Murphy, Kara Johnson Reid, Steve Przymus, Alan Kohler, and Nicole Schmidt. And we also wish to acknowledge the funding granted by the University of Cyprus to Monique Monville-Burston for travel between Nicosia and Tucson.
Finally, we want to thank the many scholars, colleagues, former students, and friends who have given advice about how best the CHL might be approached and completed and who have spurred us on by asking – is it finished yet? This hefty volume is, at last, our answer to that question.
