Acknowledgements

I am hugely indebted to many people who have provided both intellectual and moral support throughout the realization of this project and I am very happy that I can now express my most heartfelt gratitude to all those who helped me write my way through this journey.

My most faithful traveling companion on this journey was without a doubt Gaëtanelle Gilquin, who has been a most supportive and inspiring mentor to me for over ten years now. I am extremely grateful that I have always been able to count on her detailed and constructive feedback on my work, and this across all levels of abstraction (from a substantive turn of phrase to a schematic conceptual question), as well as on carefully chosen words of encouragement in times of need.

I am also greatly indebted to Sylviane Granger, not only for introducing me to Corpus Pattern Analysis, but also for the heart she put in training me and supporting me. Special thanks are likewise due to Sabine de Knop and Magali Paquot for their input that helped me steer this project in the right direction, as well as to Thomas Hoffmann for his inspiring research that has directly contributed to my work.

I have been very fortunate to work at the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics, which does not only mean being part of a stimulating research environment, but also means being surrounded by the most wonderful colleagues one could hope for when completing a book project. Amandine, Maïté, Natassia, and Tove: it simply wouldn’t have been the same without you. Thanks, Amandine, for some good advice and important nudges at important times; Maïté, for all your witty comments that made for so much laughter; Nat, for having been my lobster colleague for four years; and Tove: I owe you Gryffindor’s sword. Thank you for that, and for the countless metaphors and all the laughter over dinners that would always lift my spirits. And finally, a big thank you to Alice, Amélie, Caroline, Fanny, Isa, Jenny, Julie, Laura, Ludivine, Marie-Aude, Myriam, Nate, Pauline, Rachel, Rory, Sylvie, Tanguy, Tim, and Verena for all the good times around the CECL lunch table.

Then, conferences and other academic events have put many other scholars on my path that have shaped me as a person and as a researcher. Alison Edwards, Sandra Deshors and Sandra Götz deserve special mention for doing me the honor of collaborating with me and for the particularly rewarding experiences that these collaborations were. Thank you also to so many who have crossed my path and have given me input, advice, or simply welcome encouragement, and in particular, Benedikt Heller, Danny Mukherjee, Dylan Glynn, Edgar Schneider, Florent Perek, Lukas Sönnig, Matteo Fuoli, Robert Fuchs, Sebastian Hoffmann, Stefan Th. Gries, Tamara Bouso, Thomas Herbst, Tobias Bernaisch, and Valentin Werner.

Outside academia, friends have played a major part in keeping me sane(-ish). Thank you, Vince, for being my best friend and rock and for all your messages of encouragement from the other end of the world. Becca, for the best therapy sessions when I needed someone to rationalize thoughts and for your invaluable help with stats (the most important insight was making me realize that the likelihood of not finishing was < .05). Marie-Catherine, for the shared human adventure (and ideas - god forbid!) during all those years spent in the office next door. San, for understanding me so well - there’s a reason we’re minimal pairs. Samia and Shaïma, for the killer trio we’ve been for 14 years - our golden friendship from those golden years means the world to me. And Kat and Nono, on a scale from 1 to 10, you were certainly the most wonderful roommates I could have hoped for in the final stages of this project.

Last but most certainly not least, I would like to thank my parents for their relentless support. Thank you for teaching me the principle of ‘don’t eat the marshmallow’, for the calls of support before and after each and every important moment, and for showing such genuine interest in my passion for linguistics.