Acknowledgements
I embarked upon the creation of this volume in 2017 in order to honor Prof. Alexander Vovin on his 60th birthday. As someone who studied under Prof. Vovin for many years at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, who was significantly influenced and inspired by his work (and work ethic), and who is proud to have known him as a mentor and friend for more than twenty years, it is with great delight that I present this volume to him. This was not a solitary endeavor, of course, and without the aid of the following people this volume would not have been completed. I am extremely grateful to José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente and Marc Miyake for agreeing to be co-editors of this volume, and more specifically, for lending their expertise in Central, Western and Northern Asian linguistics to edit most of those papers. The quality of the volume was significantly improved due to their work. It was a great privilege to work with the scholars who contributed papers, and I thank them all for taking the time and effort to do so. I am also grateful to Chunyan Shu and (especially) Elisa Perotti, the editors at Brill who worked on this project and helped me in various ways. Finally, I am grateful to all the friends, colleagues and former students of Prof. Vovin who wrote comments for the Tabula Gratulatoria. Thanks to them, it became the icing on the cake.
John Kupchik
Auckland, New Zealand
September 20, 2020