Acknowledgments
We are grateful to a number of colleagues who wittingly or unwittingly commented on certain aspects of this book while it was in the making: John Whitman, Bjarke Frellesvig, Takubo Yukinori, John Kupchik, Osada Toshiki, Juha Janhunen, José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente, and Aleksandra Jarosz. No less gratitude goes to the Brill’s editorial team on both sides of the Atlantic ocean, who were our constant advisers and have overseen the publication of other books and articles by Alexander Vovin for many years: Uri Tadmor, Patricia Radder, Inge Klompmakers, Irene Jager, Kayla Griffin, and Elisa Perotti. The research work for this book was also partially supported by the European Research Council (EDJ 788812).
Our new friends in France: Irene Tamba, Augustin de Benoist, Sami Saleh, Christiane Babiak, as well as old ones from Japan, Russia, Turkey, Mongolia and the United States of America need to be equally mentioned here: Kawasaki Tamotsu, Vladimir Bokarius, Aleksei Egorov, Greg and Fan Brown, Ty Borders, Jim Baskind, Elena Perekhvalskaya, Mehmet Ölmez, Gürkan Doğan, Oyunch, Zayabaatar, and many others.
We also would like to express our gratitude to the European Research Committee (ERC), whose generous support (in the form of the grant #788812 for Alexander Vovin’s advanced research project An Etymological Dictionary of the Japonic Languages) provided a partial funding for this book.
We would also like to thank the members of our family: our parents and parents-in-law Ishisaki Tetsuo and Ishisaki Fukiko, to whom this book is dedicated. And the last, but not the least, our children Jacob Tomotatsu Ishisaki-Vovin and Marie Alexandra Ishisaki-Vovin.
Alexander and Sambi Vovin
Poligny, Ile de France, December 30, 2021