Acknowledgements

The research for this book was funded by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO, grant number 322-30-006). I would also like to acknowledge that it would have been inconceivable to successfully carry out the project without the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (Maria Pantelia, director).

The Cambridge University Press staff have been most helpful. I would like to thank especially Michael Sharp, Katie Idle, Bethany Johnson, Divya Arjunan, Trent Hancock and the two anonymous referees.

I thank my family for their unwavering support and faith in me: my mother, my brother, my father and Lisa. My promotores, Gerard and Rutger, have supported me throughout the entire process of submitting grant proposals and ultimately writing my PhD thesis, which was the basis for this book. Ineke Sluiter has strongly supported my career in several ways. Of my academic teachers and, later, colleagues, Adriaan Rademaker and Casper de Jonge have been especially important. I warmly thank all of you.

Two scholars in cognitive linguistics have had a highly significant influence on this book. Alan Cienki welcomed me into his research group on gesture with open arms. Barbara Dancygier supervised my stay at the University of British Columbia. The work I did there, the workshops I followed and the conversations we had (as well as the ‘cognitive poetics’ meetings) were of great formative importance to me as a researcher. I will always have extremely fond memories of my stay in Vancouver.

I would also like to thank the following scholars associated with the ‘viewpoint group’ for the stimulating discussions: Ad Foolen, Arie Verhagen, Douglas Virdee, Max van Duijn, Ninke Stukker, Lieven Vandelanotte, Luuk Huitink. Special thanks to Eve Sweetser, José Sanders and Kobie van Krieken for organising the ‘time and viewpoint’ theme session at the 14th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (ICLC) in Estonia and for editing the corresponding theme issue of Cognitive Linguistics.

Finally, a big thank you to my three closest colleagues and friends during this project: Thomas van Vroonhoven, Kasper Kok and Giel Visser.