Acknowledgments
This book is a revised version of my PhD dissertation which I submitted at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in May 2024.
First, I wish to acknowledge the Hawaiian people as the original and present inhabitants and caretakers of the lands on which I lived and conducted this research at UH Mānoa, and the Kizh Nation, on whose lands I continued this work afterwards. I express mahalo for the opportunity to live in Hawai‘i and to learn from many Hawaiian people, past and present, as a vital part of my education.
Second, I thank my friend and collaborator, Dewi Setiani, for sharing her language with me and lending her voice in support of the documentation and description of the Sundanese language as part of this project. I also thank Eti for her contribution as a Sundanese speaker. I express appreciation to Dr. Eri Kurniawan, Dr. Chye Retty Isnendes, Dr. R. Dian Dia-an Muniroh, and Dr. Hernawan Sunda for sharing their expertise about Sundanese, and to Adinda, Taasya, and Yanti who answered many questions from me during our work together transcribing Baduy language recordings for my graduate assistantship.
I am deeply grateful to the many people at the UH Mānoa and beyond who supported me in this research. Thank you to my dissertation committee—Brad McDonnell, Shelece Easterday, Gary Holton, William O’Grady, and Joni Sasaki. I am also especially grateful to Dr. Bob Blust for all that he taught me about the Austronesian language family. I would also like to thank the Bilinski Educational Foundation for funding the collection of Sundanese data for this project, and the completion of the dissertation through the Bilinski Dissertation Fellowship. A big thank you also goes to the series editors—Yukinori Takubo, Haruo Kubozono, Shin Fukuda, and Masahiro Yamada—for their support in the publication process, and to the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (ninjal) for funding open access publication for this book. Thank you to my colleagues and friends in Oʻahu, for your comradery and practical help. Thank you to my family, for all your love and support.
Finally, thanks be to God, the Creator and Sustainer of all good things.