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Dutch children’s acquisition of verbal and adjectival inflection
Polišenská, D.
Publication date
2010
Link to publication
Citation for published version (APA):
Polišenská, D. (2010). Dutch children’s acquisition of verbal and adjectival inflection. LOT.
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CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There have been many people who generously gave their time to help me formulate the ideas behind this thesis. First of all, I would like to thank my thesis advisors Fred Weerman, Hans Bennis and Elma Blom for their expert guidance through all stages of this Ph.D. process, for encouraging me to visit international conferences and write scientific papers. I also thank Fred for giving me the opportunity to proceed with the perception experiment in the Baby lab in Utrecht and Hans for his to-the-point comments in the later stages of the thesis. Elma was not only my co-promotor but we also shared a workspace. It was truly fascinating to see her daily enthusiasm for linguistic research. I want to thank Elma for always finding time to listen to my questions, ideas and doubts. This thesis would be virtually barren of ideas without Elma’s inspiration.
I am grateful to the committee members for the time and energy they put into reading and commenting on the manuscript.
I also thank the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for funding this research with a grant 360-70-110 ‘Variation in Inflection’.
At the ACLC I was surrounded by friendly and knowledgeable people whom I would like to thank for their scientific and moral support – my thanks go especially to Antje Orgassa, Alies MacLean, Marian Erkelens, Suzanne Aalberse, Maren Pannemann, Esther Parriger, Lotte Henrichs, Annerieke Boland, Margot Rozendaal, Marije Michel, Loulou Edelman, Marcel Giezen, Irene Jacobi, Robert Cloutier, Margarita Steinel, Diana Apoussidou, Catherine van Beuningen, Rafael Fischer, Wieneke Wesseling, Niels Smit, Hedde Zeijlstra, Nivja de Jong, Aafke Hulk, Anne Baker, Jan de Jong, Jan Don, Folkert Kuiken, Jan Hulstijn, Elisabeth van der Linden and Petra-Ellen Kester. Outside the ACLC I enjoyed discussions with Leonie Cornips, Sharon Unsworth, Josje Verhagen, Elise de Bree, Annemarie Kerkhoff and František Kratochvíl.
The collection of new data was an essential part of this project. I would like to thank all parents for allowing their children to take part in this research and all the children for their participation! I also thank the schools and the day-care centres for their enthusiasm and hospitality during the testing. Elma and Antje provided me with valuable input concerning the elicitation tasks. Thanks a lot for the time spent brainstorming together about the test design as well as making the test material. I thank Hugo Quené for statistical advice in quantifying the children’s data.
The perception experiment with 18-month-old infants would not be possible without the mutual cooperation of Marian, Elma and myself. Here I also owe thanks to Elizabeth Johnson for inviting us to Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen and for her invaluable advise in setting up the experiment. Special thanks go to Frank Wijnen for his encouragement, his help with recruiting the participants as well as with providing us with the facilities in the Baby lab in Utrecht. I also thank Loulou who read both the grammatical and ungrammatical sentences in her most children’s friendly voice.
I was fortunate to find motivated students who liked to be involved in this project. For valuable assistance in collecting, transcribing and scoring the children’s data I thank Sipkje van der Schaaf, Marjolein Prijs, Siebe de Korte and Daniel Puccini. I am also grateful to Daniel for putting so much time and effort into the final editing of the manuscript. All errors that have remained are mine.
I thank my paranimfs Alies MacLean and Wilke van de Kamp who supported me in organizing and coordinating the final steps.
The cover photograph is from an art project by Stephanie Rhode. I want to thank Stephanie for letting me use this picture and also for the wonderful day on the beach in Katwijk when more than 3000 sand houses built in the early morning disappeared into the sea by the end of the day.
For some people there are not enough thanks in the world. I thank my sister Kamila for her steadfast support in various ways: From discussing issues related to language acquisition to being the sweetest aunt to my children. When, two years ago, she moved to London I literally needed some time to recover from the sudden emptiness. I also thank my friend Emöke for being open twenty-four hours a day to dispense her wisdom on the human psyche and to offer me comfort at times when it all became too much. And lastly, my bottomless thanks go to my husband Ulric and to my children Barbora and Aron for simply being.
