Acknowledgements

My most sincere thanks and appreciation go to all the colleagues who took the time to review earlier drafts and make invaluable comments and insightful suggestions for improvements. All remaining errors are mine alone. They are: Aoife Ahern, Amanda Edmonds, Paz Gonzalez, Pascale Leclercq, Kevin McManus, Adeline Patard, Nadia Mifka-Profozic, Tania Leal, José Amenos Pons, Rafael Salaberry, Lorraine Turpault d’Huvé.

I am also very thankful to all the participants in France and in the United States who completed all the tasks and without whom this research project would not have been possible.

This research project could not have been carried out without the expert and patient work of my statistics consultant, Dr. Mark Borgstrom, who as always, took the time to understand the study design, the research questions, the data, and how to best exploit them. Since he just retired, this was our last project, and I will miss him very much.

Last but not least, I am deeply appreciative of all the efficient and professional work the John Benjamins team did to produce this monograph promptly. I met my acquisition manager, Kees Vaes, when I was trying to publish my first monograph some twenty years ago. The series editors rejected it, so it was published elsewhere. However, I persisted and ended up publishing all my subsequent work — two monographs and six edited volumes — with John Benjamins. My professional and personal relationship with Kees is one of the relationships I have enjoyed over the past couple decades all over Europe and North America, and value the most.