Acknowledgements

This book is the result of Gunter’s by now more than 30 years of researching the language and culture of the Trobriand Islanders in Papua New Guinea, Barbara’s 15½ months of field research in Tauwema and our continuous joint discussions of our Trobriand experiences ever since 1982.

Writing this book would have been impossible without the help of many people and institutions. First, Gunter would like to thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG: Ei-24/10-1-5; Se-473/2-1-2) especially Ursula Far Hollender and Manfred Briegel; the Research Unit for Human Ethology of the Max-Planck-Society and its director Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt; and the Department of Language and Cognition (formerly the Cognitive Anthropology Research Group) at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics and its director Stephen C. Levinson for their support during and after his field research.

Gunter also thanks the National and Provincial Governments in Papua New Guinea, the Institute for PNG Studies – especially Don Niles, and the National Research Institute – especially James Robins, for their assistance with, and permission for, his research projects.

Karin Kastens, the librarian of the MPI for psycholinguistics, deserves special thanks for her great help in realizing this book project.

The technical group of the MPI for Psycholinguistics, notably Paul Trilsbeek, Nick Wood, Ad Verbunt and Reiner Dirksmeyer made it possible to combine data presented in this book with the Internet access to the original audio- and video-documents. Herbert Baumann and especially Ad Verbunt improved our digitized photographs electronically. We very gratefully acknowledge their excellent cooperation. We also thank Gunter’s student assistants Cielke Hendriks and Maartje Weenink for their help in finalizing the map of Tauwema and its immediate environment.

We owe special thanks to Brigitte Bauer, Harry Beran, Ad Foolen, Clare Harding, Volker Heeschen, Heidi Keller, Pieter Seuren and Eric Venbrux for very extensive and stimulating comments on first drafts of this volume. Harry Beran and Clare Harding carefully corrected what the authors supposed to be English. Remaining mistakes are ours, of course.

Our gratitude also goes to Kees Vaes, Patricia Leplae and the other staff of John Benjamins Publishing Company who have been – as always – very professional, helpful and most pleasant to work with.

Last but not least we express our sincere thanks to the people of the Trobriand Islands, and above all the inhabitants of Tauwema and our consultants for their hospitality, friendship, and patient cooperation. With great gratitude we dedicate our book to the children of the Trobriand Islands – pela gugwadi!