Acknowledgements

We would like to express our gratitude to the many people who have contributed to the preparation and production of this volume. First and foremost we would like to thank our co-contributors for sharing their work with us and their continuous efforts in writing and revising their chapters. We are also grateful for the invaluable comments made on earlier drafts by the series editor, Humphrey Tonkin, and our meticulous reviewer, Jiří Nekvapil. We would also like to thank Florian Coulmas and Marian Sloboda for their insightful comments.

We would particularly like to thank Jason Fan, Masahiro Tanemo, Gillian Hudson, Patricia Hilson and Megumi Hirano for their help with proof-reading and the technical preparation of the manuscript. We would also like to offer special thanks to Anke de Looper and Ineke Elskamp of John Benjamins for their encouragement and guidance in all editorial matters.

Finally, we would like to acknowledge the support provided by the Sophia Linguistic Institute of International Communication (SOLIFIC) and the Faculty of Foreign Studies at Sophia University during the preparation of the manuscript.