Acknowledgments

This book is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation, completed at the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium) in February 2017. I therefore wish to thank the many wonderful people who contributed to making my four years of PhD an amazing personal and professional experience. First and foremost, I have been carefully coached and tutored by not one but two dedicated promoters, the professors Liesbeth Degand and Gaëtanelle Gilquin, who managed to never contradict each other and instead provided me with complementary input in the most fruitful and educative way a PhD student can wish for. Liesbeth and Gaëtanelle, thank you for your restless guidance and your friendship!

I was also lucky to be a member of two research centers of the Linguistic Research Unit at the UCL: the CECL – Center for English Corpus Linguistics and Valibel – Discours et Variation, which both provided their share of inspiring seminars, friendly feedback and birthday parties. Many thanks to my colleagues of both sides. A special thought goes to the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, which funded this research, and in particular to the members of the Concerted Research Action “Fluency and Disfluency Markers”, both in Louvain-la-Neuve and Namur, who taught me the merits (and challenges!) of teamwork and whose contribution to the present book is substantial.

I thank Prof. Dr. Anita Fetzer for her guidance and efficiency as editor of Pragmatics and Beyond New Series, the reviewers of the manuscript for their careful and constructive suggestions, and Isja Conen from John Benjamins Publishing Company for her help with the publication. Any remaining errors are mine.

I am also particularly indebted to the COST network “TextLink”, which gave me the opportunity to work with experts in my field all across Europe, in particular the professors Sandrine Zufferey and María-Josep Cuenca as well as the friendly advice of Pr. Ted Sanders and many other members of the Discourse Marker community here and abroad (Sílvia Gabarró-López, Elena Pascual, Karolina Grzech and more). Another group to have welcomed me at the beginning of my PhD was the MDMA team led by my colleague and friend Dr. Catherine Bolly, whose dynamism and joie de vivre never cease to amaze me.

A PhD is not just a professional adventure and I could not have made it to the end (relatively) sanely without the help of my friends. Cheers to the Big Five for our shared love of beer and boardgames. Much love to my Parisian Team Rocket – always. And of course, to my French and Belgian families who loved and supported me, even though they did not always understand me. Last but not least, to my loving teammate, Kévin Libion, who suffered endless blabber about discourse markers, post-conference debriefs and office gossip with true stoic grace, cared for me, fed me, always believed in me, my most faithful supporter. Collector!