Acknowledgements
I want to thank the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras for its continuous support. I have written this book due in part to a sabbatical and release time from this institution. Both research and analysis were made possible by grants from the UPR Vice-presidency and the Office of Graduate Studies at the Río Piedras Campus (Decanato de Estudios Graduados e Investigación-DEGI), which provided a mini grant to complete the data analysis. The continuous support of the Puerto Rican Association of University Professors (Asociación Puertorriqueña de Profesores Universitarios-APPU) has been central to this endeavor as well. Some of the initial work was funded by a summer grant from the University of Alabama atTuscaloosa. Additionally, the Department of Applied Linguistics at Georgia State University in Atlanta provided office space and equipment to conduct part of the phonetic analysis during August 2007.
I would like to thank anonymous reviewers for the comments and suggestions on the original manuscript. Their input, as well as that of the ROLA series editor, has contributed to the content and final edition of this work. Comments and suggestions from the COLA series editor, Prof. Peter Bakker, have helped me in the reevaluation of some data and in reframing some analyses of semantic phenomena. Elisa Perotti, Editor of Languages and Linguistics at Brill, has expertly guided the process of book editing through different stages. I am deeply grateful to all of them. I wish to extend my special thanks to Raquel Salas Rivera for his support and help in editing this manuscript. I am very grateful to Lucy Pickering, long time collaborator and co-author of Chapter 6. Abigail Ramos-Michel’s help during data collection has been invaluable during the research process as well. Many Papiamentu speakers have contributed to this book in one way or another. My heartfelt thanks to them.
I am also indebted to Camille Wagner-Rodríguez, who contributed to data structuring and the analysis of lexical categories. I would like to thank Martha Dijkhoff for her help in the analysis of some Papiamentu data on vowel harmony. Many thanks are due to Gretza Piñeiro and Yaítza Rodríguez, readers who also contributed with comments to the original manuscript. Members of the audience at conferences from the Society of Pidgin and Creole Languages, the Society for Caribbean Linguistics, Formal Approaches to Creole Studies, the Associação de Crioulos de Base Lexical Portuguesa e Espanhola, among others, have provided valuable comments during presentations. To those who, over the years, supported my efforts and encouraged me to continue my research, I am grateful: Edelmiro Salas Gonzalez, a posthumous recognition, Marisol Joseph-Haynes, Sandra Pascuas, Marina Martínez Cora, Ramón Valle, Vanessa Austin, Clifton Armstrong, Don Walicek, Michael Martínez, Rose Vázquez, my son, Raquel Salas Rivera, my sister, Sandra, my brothers, Neftalí, Yamil and Emir, and my mother, Virginia Castillo Beauchamp. Any errors of interpretation are, of course, my sole responsibility.