this thesis with me or were in helpful in other ways: Rainer Osswald,
Sebastian Löbner, Lea Kawaletz, Adrian Czardybon, Jean-Pierre Koenig,
Vasiliki Tsouni, Samuel Taylor and Felix Knuth.
I would like to thank Lea Kawaletz and Jasmin Pfeifer for extensively
proofreading the manuscript, which greatly improved the quality of the
text. I am immensely grateful to my friends and my parents, Rita Stevens
and Marc Van Hooste, for being the unwavering support by my side.
Although he was not connected to my project or to the Heinrich-
Heine-University, I wish to thank Johan van der Auwera for inspiring
me to pursue a PhD in linguistics with his interesting lectures.
Finally, I would like to thank my language informants: Jens
Fleischhauer (German), Thomas Gamerschlag (German) Alexandra Red-
mann (German), Lea Kawaletz (German), Jasmin Pfeifer (German), Adri-
an Czardybon (German, Polish), Frauke Albersmeier (German), Robert D.
Van Valin, Jr. (English), Elizabeth Nizzi (English), Samuel Taylor (Eng-
lish), Peter Sutton (English), Kurt Erbach (English), Rita Stevens (Dutch),
Marc Van Hooste (Dutch), Ruben van de Vijver (Dutch), Pia-Mareen van
de Kerkhof (Dutch), Tim Robeers (Dutch), Amandine Dumont (French),
Simon Petitjean (French), Heimir Viðarsson (Icelandic), Audronė Šolienė
(Lithuanian), Adri Breed (Afrikaans), Brian Nolan (Irish), Nikolai Skoro-
lupov (Russian, Estonian), Dejan Matić (Serbian), Vasiliki Tsouni
(Greek), Marios Andreou (Greek), Alex Tillas (Greek), Adina Drago-
mirescu (Romanian), Borja Ariztimuño Lopez (Basque), Thomas
Brochhagen (Spanish), Hugo Cardoso (Portuguese), Sena Ceylan (Turk-
ish), Ana Kolkhidashvili (Georgian), Keti Chilaia (Georgian), Ana Ogo-
rodnikova (Russian), Zoltán Magyar (Hungarian), Shinichi Iguchi (Japa-
nese) and several others who requested to remain anonymous.