Acknowledgements

First of all, I thank all who participated in this research as interviewees, survey respondents, experiment participants and speakers and writers during data collection. I am beyond grateful for your time, patience, and the trust you placed in me in sharing your perspectives on Romani.

In academia, my deepest gratitude goes to Birgit Hellwig. Thank you for your unwavering support over the years, for paving my way into academia, writing one expert opinion after another, and being such an excellent model not only as a supervisor, but also as a researcher and boss. We have worked together in a couple of different constellations — I wouldn’t want to miss any of them. Your passion for linguistics and your interest in your doctoral students beyond their research is incredibly valuable — I hope you know that I am not the first person to walk away from an exchange with you feeling reassured and confident every single time.

I have been incredibly lucky to have a second supervisor, Evangelia Adamou, who invested as much energy as a first supervisor. Thank you for accepting to co-supervise my thesis right away. I will never forget the electrifying energy of your prompt “Are you kidding me?” and it is precisely this energy and spirit that you always brought to our conversations, and which continues to inspire me. Moreover, thank you for warm welcome to Paris and sharing your thoughts beyond thesis work with me.

Birgit and Lila, I will appreciate for a lifetime that I got the opportunity to meet and work with you as linguists — and as the women you are. Moreover, I thank Daniel Bunčić for presiding over the defensio and the further members of the jury, Felix Ameka, Andrea Scala, and Anna-Maria Sonnemann, for reading this book cover to cover and engaging with my work.

This project would not have been realised without the generous funding of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes and the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School/​Stiftung Mercator. Moreover, beyond crucial financial support, I am grateful to these institutions for the freedom to pursue my research and for everything I had the opportunity to learn from their study programs.

I also received very valuable institutional support: Especially the Department of Linguistics at the University of Cologne provided me with a productive surrounding and indispensable equipment for data collection. Within the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School, special thanks go to the colloquium in class 2 and its mentors Chris Bongartz, Nico Pethes and Martin Becker who accompanied several of my chapter drafts with interdisciplinary exchange and feedback. The foundation Schüler*innen Helfen Leben (SHL) became my cooperation partner for the Mercator scholarship. I will forever be thankful for what I learned from working with SHL. Special thanks go to Patrick Hoemke for being open to this cooperation from the start and adapting our plans to the situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The association Audio Vita e.V. provided indispensable support in finding research participants. Finally, Isabel Compes, Rebecca Fisch, Gordana Nešović, Katrin Obersteiner, Paula Simon, Ruždija Sejdović, and Moritz Vogel put me into contact with either members of the Romani communities or other persons and their networks. I am grateful for all these connections made and I truly admire your energy and the work you do.

I thank Dragana Grbić, Mirjana Mirić, and Svetlana Ćirković for improving my BCMS language skills and proofreading transcripts. I enjoyed every coffee with you in Belgrade, and I regret that these were less numerous than planned due to the pandemic.

I am grateful to Anna Dolić, Dragana Grbić, Katarina Trogrlić, Nikola Simić, and Nora Herzig for (back-)translating survey items. Hvala!

Judit Vari was so kind to share her Implicit Association Test code with me so I could use it as the basis of mine. Bastian Fuchs helped to prepare the stimuli pre-selection. Jonas Frings and Jonas Heinen offered technical support in the implementation phase. Thank you all for making this realisation easier for me.

My gratitude for forwarding calls for survey and experiment participation goes to Sidonia Bauer, Aida Bećirović, Rebecca Fisch, Martin Gális, Dieter Halwachs, Benjamin Harter, Jule Kuhn, Mirjana Mirić, Ionela Padure, and everyone who shared the respective link with others without my knowing it.

I also thank everyone who participated in a pre-test or norming study for my research — your indications and feedback were as important as the results.

A PhD project can be a lonesome endeavour. I am even more grateful for exchanges with my colleagues and fellow linguists. I had numerous valuable methodological and ethical discussions with Sonja Eisenbeiß, Henrike Frye, Miyuki Henning, Gianna Urbanczik, and Steffen Reetz. I wish to thank Nikolaus Himmelmann for challenging me on several occasions to give way more than 100 %. Sonja Riesberg and Katharina Haude became colleagues both in Cologne and Paris and offered support in preparing my stay in France. After we once coincidentally shared a train ride to Brussels, Daniel Kölligan handed me some left-over Paris metro tickets which I was finally able to use after the pandemic. Sometimes, it’s the little things. He and Anna Bonifazi also invited me to present my research in their seminars, and I enjoyed every exchange with both of you not least because of your captivating passion for your own work and that of others. Daniel Bunčić was the first to give me a teaching assignment and the first to provide advice on writing abstracts in general — and in the case of a deadline the day after with zero lines prepared. Thank you for your trust and for getting me to write this abstract. It was well worth it. With Anna-Maria Sonnemann, I had the opportunity to exchange experience about working in Romani linguistics from early on. With her and Michael Frotscher, I visited Norbert Boretzky who kindly invited us to Bochum and continued to share his experience after this day. Following on from a seminar on mixed languages taught by Katja Hannß, I took the first steps in Romani linguistics together with Paul Compensis, eventually preparing a joint talk for a student conference. Many of these encounters were not only productive or thought-provoking — several are great memories, too.

I had the opportunity to present parts of my work at several conferences and workshops. I am very grateful to the organisers for these possibilities and to the audiences for their valuable feedback. Moreover, I thank everyone who shared a pre-print copy of their work with me. The fact that this work is now available in book form is thanks to the critical feedback of two anonymous reviewers as well as the editor of this series, Prof. Li Wei, and the team at the Benjamins publishing house, especially Isja Conen. All remaining mistakes are my own.

Of course, my family and friends took part in this endeavour. Special thanks go to Anna-Lena Oltersdorf and Chris Funke for critical feedback and perspectives from other disciplines. Temporarily co-working in home office, several phone and video calls over the years, and discussing chapter drafts on a car ride through the country — despite geographic distance, we’ve shared much of our paths. The friendship and exchange with you are incredibly precious to me. I thank Miyuki Henning and Gianna Urbanczik for being the persons I could share so much more than an office and a job with. Starting from strawberries in winter, you two brought joy and laughter to every (working) day we spent together. With Niklas Kaapke, Sjelle Hiebner, Jule Kuhn, Sarah Schultz, Jörn Weber, Riccardo Ginevra, Lena Groh-Trautmann, Jonathan Heckmann, Tabea Brenner, Frederik Doktor, Katrin Obersteiner, Lena Pointner, Rebecca Fisch, Paula Simon, Tabea Thies, Britta Olsson, and Tina Schraml I had as many conversations about visions, excitement, and passion for our respective work as we exchanged thoughts on challenges we face. Thank you for both being a constant source of inspiration and lending an ear every now and then.

Last but for sure not least: I wish to thank my partner and my parents for encouraging and supporting me, listening to whatever issue came up, and eventually proofreading this work. Marion and Kay, thank you for encouraging me to pursue my interests and passions and for having my back since day one. Stefan, you have been an indispensable support, and you have built my resilience up to new heights. I am beyond grateful for your true understanding of what it takes to get such a project over the finishing line. To all three of you: Thank you for always believing in me and bearing with me.