I was very honored and happy to be invited back to Beijing for another round of talks at the China International Forum on Cognitive Linguistics. Like last time, it was a wonderful opportunity to discuss work that I care about a lot (by others and myself) in a context that allowed me to present a much bigger picture, discuss much more of contents that are—due to space constraints—usually shortened or even omitted, and include the practical corpus-linguistic component that I think has done so much for Cognitive Linguistics, and I am grateful to have been offered this chance again.
I am also very grateful to Prof. Fuyin (Thomas) Li for his hospitality and energy in making this happen and ensuring that everything went just as well as last time; my thanks of course also go to all members of the organizing team, the student team taking care of all logistical aspects of my stay, and the editorial team responsible for making this publication happen, Thomas Li, Jing Du, Na Liu, and Shan Zuo—if this book turns out to be informative to the cognitive-linguistic community, credit is due to their diligent work as well.
Stefan Th. Gries
UC Santa Barbara & JLU Giessen
January 2019