Acknowledgments
This book is a strongly revised and updated version of my Ph.D. dissertation, which was written under the supervision of Prof. Dr. A.M. Lubotsky at Leiden University Centre for Linguistics and defended on the 17th of December, 2013. The research leading to that dissertation was carried out within the project Proto-Greek: a reconstruction, funded by NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research). The revisions that resulted in the present book were carried out in part during the project Unraveling Homer’s Language, again funded by NWO (project number 275-70-043).
I am extremely grateful to all those who supported and helped me during the process of writing and completing this book, and would like to mention the following people in particular.
Neither my dissertation nor the completion of this monograph would have been thinkable without the encouragement, feedback and support of my doctoral supervisor, Prof. Sasha Lubotsky. I owe more than can be expressed here to the support and acumen of Prof. Ineke Sluiter, whom I wish to thank sincerely for her trust in me over the years.
Furthermore, I would like to thank my colleagues of the Comparative Indo-European Linguistics group at LUCL for countless ongoing discussions over the last fifteen years, and for their feedback on individual draft chapters: Alwin Kloekhorst, Guus Kroonen, Michaël Peyrot and Tijmen Pronk. Prof. Mark Janse invited me to come to Ghent University as a Visiting Professor in 2014, and introduced me to new ways of approaching Homeric language. Prof. Andreas Willi and Prof. Philomen Probert welcomed me to Oxford in May 2018 and May 2019, and by their support enabled me to make the most of my stay there. Being a Visiting Scholar at Wolfson College during these periods allowed me to make significant progress on the revisions leading to this book.
It is a pleasure to thank Prof. Alain Blanc (Rouen), Máté Ittzés (Budapest) and Jesse Lundquist (Oxford), who all read my dissertation attentively and were so kind to share their corrections and feedback with me.
Needless to say, none of the aforementioned people is to be held responsible for errors of fact or judgment contained in this book.
Finally, I would like to thank Annelies, Christiaan, Winifred, Erik and Tessa for their love and support.
Leiden, April 2021