Acknowledgments

This book is an extension of the work I conducted for my PhD thesis at the University of California, Merced. Without the generous support of my advisor Teenie Matlock, none of this would have been possible. I am eternally thankful to her.

Much of the ideas presented here were developed during a visit to Madison, Wisconsin, where Marcus Perlman was a constant source of inspiration. I am forever thankful for the many great discussions we had together.

This book would not have been possible without the data collection efforts by Louise Connell and Dermot Lynott, who created the modality norms that form the focus of analysis. This book is essentially a love letter to their norms.

Tremendous thanks go to my father, who proofread every single chapter. I also want to thank Esther Roth at John Benjamins, as well as the series editors Kris Heylen and Ninke Stukker and the two anonymous reviewers. A special round of thanks goes to Brittany Oakes, who has been an immense support by proof-reading the entire manuscript.

I want to thank Francesca Strik Lievers, Andre Coneglian, and Paula Pérez-Sobrino for providing input on an earlier chapter, and for shaping my thinking on “synesthetic metaphors.” I have also learned a tremendous amount from Asifa Majid, who – together with Lila San Roque, Laura Speed, and Carolyn O’Meara – I want to thank for inviting me to the Perception Metaphor workshop at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen. Much of the thinking in this book was further shaped by the questions and feedback I have received from attendees of my talks at RaAM Berlin, RaAM Odense, FTL3 Osijek, ICLC-14 Tartu and the International Corpus Linguistics Conference in Birmingham. I have also received great input on this topic by attendees of colloquium talks, and I want to thank Damian Blasi and the Zurich Center for Linguistics, Diane Pecher, René Zeelenberg, Beate Hampe, Márton Sóskuthy, Sarah Duffy, Martine Grice, Daniel Alcaraz Carrión, Patrycja Strycharczuk, and Grace Oh for giving me an opportunity to speak about this material. I also want to thank friends that have given input on the materials here – even if merely in casual conversations – including Christiane Schmitt, Timo Roettger, Roman Auriga, Julius Hassemer, and Thomas Kettig. Further thanks go to Bryan Kerster who supported me with Python and SQL in setting up COCA.

Finally, I want to thank my mum, Ellen Schepp-Winter, and the many other people who supported me during the time of writing this book, including Louis Hemming, Vincenzo de Salvo, George Lychnos, Jeannette Littlemore, Suganthi John, Nick Groom, Matteo Fuoli, Christian Mayer, Barry Dixon, Jim Digiambattista, Ruth Page, Adam Schembri, Amanda Patten, Tommy Seywert, and Pedro Miguel Martins. Special thanks go to the owners and staff of my favorite Birmingham places where significant parts of this book were written, including New Street Station’s Joe and the Juice, Faculty Coffee, 200 Degree Coffee, Quarterhorse Coffee, and Tilt. I want to thank the Midland Outs Badminton group, my yoga teachers Anna Robottom and Richard George, and the team of the Henrietta Street Gym for making life enjoyable during the time of writing (and no, Louis, I still don’t know why animals can’t talk).