Acknowledgements

There are many people to thank in relation to this monograph, which is an extension of the work completed for my PhD. That project was funded by a ‘Faculty Prize Scholarship’ from the University of Sheffield’s Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health, and I am sincerely grateful for this support. I also extend my heartfelt thanks to the participants, who so generously and enthusiastically gave their time to this study; Jan Otter, who helped in the participant recruitment process; and Janet Webster for kindly sharing the data from the neurotypical speakers analysed in this book. In addition, I would like to acknowledge the members of the stroke groups at which I volunteered during my PhD; I truly thank them for everything they taught me and will forever remain humbled by their kindness, joviality and steadfast determination to not let aphasia stand in their way.

I would also like to thank various academic colleagues and collaborators, most especially Elena Lieven, whose feedback on my work and ongoing words of encouragement have been very much appreciated. Elena’s generosity in sharing her time and expertise cannot be overstated. My heartfelt thanks also go to Nicholas Groom for his enthusiasm for my work, for comments on earlier chapter drafts and, in particular, for encouraging me to write this research into a monograph. I am grateful, too, to the following individuals and groups for specific points of advice, and assistance with reliability testing or gathering particular resources: Andrew Buddery, Chris Dixon, Louise Lander, Ramya Maitreyee, Jai MacKenzie, Dea Nielson, Florent Perek, Bodo Winter and the ‘Sirona Care & Health and Bristol After Stroke Virtual Conversation Group’. I have also very much appreciated the sound advice given to me by Janice Murray about coordinating my research during the final stages of bringing this monograph to press. More generally, I extend my thanks to Helen Jenkins and colleagues in the Speech and Language Therapy Department at Birmingham City University , where I was working until recently, and to Julie Lachkovic and the Speech and Language Therapy Team at Manchester Metropolitan University, where I am now based, for many interesting discussions about aphasia and clinical practice. Similarly, I would like to thank the following former fellow postgraduate students at Sheffield University for their ongoing support and always lively conversations about human communication sciences: Noaf Alkheraiji, Rafizah Badar, Baharak Baranian, Chloe Bate, Sarah Bryan, Helen Cameron, Christina Haupt, Thomas Hopkins, Ramya Maitreyee, Abebayehu Messele Mekonnen, Dea Nielsen, Kim Turner and Azrita Zain. In addition, I am very grateful to the series editors and staff at John Benjamins Publishing Company, especially Jan-Ola Östman, Kyoko Ohara and Esther Roth, for their general support and helpful guidance on this manuscript. I also very much appreciate the useful feedback from two anonymous reviewers.

On a more personal note, I thank my immediate family: Laurie, Rita, David and John Hatchard; also, of course, Alan Worrall. Additionally, I will forever be grateful for the encouragement given to me by the following people: