Acknowledgments

This book contains the theoretical apparatus that I developed for my Ph.D. thesis, which I completed in 2019 at the University of Lille. I was and remain extremely grateful to my supervisor, Ilse Depraetere, to whom I am forever indebted. Thank you for your patient guidance and continuous support. In various ways, I have learned extensively from you. Challenging at times, your keenness and attention to detail and precision were truly stimulating. Your immense knowledge was a considerable source of inspiration. And your contagious joy and enthusiasm for research provided much-needed motivation during the tough times of the research process. Thank you for being a shining example of scientific rigor, open-mindedness and humility. You have made me a better linguist and a better person.

I also owe a great intellectual debt to Martin Hilpert and Billy Clark, who respectively introduced me to Construction Grammar and Relevance Theory during my MA studies in Lille. I thank them both for formative discussions and for instilling in me the passion that led to the work presented in this book. I am most grateful to Billy Clark for the countless discussions (on my research, Relevance Theory, and linguistics more generally) and for providing such a safe space for doubt and questioning.

I have learned a lot from my interactions with linguists from Lille, Paris and from around the world. It will be difficult to do justice to them all, but I need to mention Dany Amiot, Bert Cappelle, Agnès Celle, Guillaume Desagulier, Rita Finkbeiner, Dylan Glynn, Gunther Kaltenböck, Maarten Lemmens, Mégane Lesuisse, Cameron Morin, Cédric Patin, Christopher Piñón, Laurence Romain and Jasper Vangaever. They have been teachers, colleagues, co-authors, friends, and they have added considerably to my intellectual growth and my experience in academia. Special thanks go to Bert Cappelle, who has always been eager to share thoughts and whose feedback has greatly contributed to keeping a sharp critical mind.

Thanks are also extended to Helen Barton and Isabel Collins, from Cambridge University Press, for an enjoyable editorial process.

Last but not least, thank you, coffee. It is not just the taste of it, even though I have learned to appreciate a good double espresso. I generally think that people vastly underestimate the power of coffee. In particular, I have always been a fervent advocate of coffee breaks. Not that they make for good excuses, or anything. Coffee breaks directly contribute to the research process. Those shared with colleagues, after a seminar. Those at conferences, discussing each other’s presentations. Those that are much needed before submitting an article. And most importantly, those with your family and friends, when you remember that their love is what matters most. For all of that, thank you, coffee.