¹ As I did in 1987 to honor my uncle, Morton Bloomfield, in ‘On the use of iconic elements in etymological investigation: Some case studies from Greek’ (Diachronica 4.1–2.1–26); he had been instrumental in steering me into linguistics in the first place several years earlier and the article was on a topic he had once written about, so dedicating the article to him was an easy and even natural decision.

² I have discussed obituaries in general and in Language in particular in a few Editor's Department columns in recent years (Language 80.1.4–6, March 2004, and 81.1.7–9, March 2005); see also my annual report in the June 2004 Editor's Department (Language 80.2.361–71), but especially p. 369 where there is discussion of Language's obituary policy.

³ Grouping these items together required two minor deviations from our usual practices: Peter's is placed last among the articles, instead of being placed according to its date of acceptance, and the related reviews are first among the reviews rather than being placed alphabetically by book author.

⁴ I am not counting in this group the separate page at the beginning of the March 1999 issue (Language 75.1) telling of the then-recent death of James McCawley; though not a formal dedication, the somber announcement of Jim's untimely death came in the very issue in which his presidential address appeared (‘Why syntactic structure reflects logical structure as much as it does, but only that much’, pp. 34–62).

⁵ The volume dedicated to Dr. Chao was (presumably) planned under Bloch's editorship, but by the time the issue came out, Bloch had died (1965) and was himself then the honoree in this next dedicated issue.

⁶ As a student of language change, I am intrigued that the earlier citations referred to the honoree as a professor in a university while Bloch's uses at; my admittedly more modern sensibilities favor at here.

⁷ In Dr. Burkhardt's case, the volume was ‘respectfully and affectionately’ dedicated. He was a Darwinian scholar and a friend of linguistics throughout his term at ACLS.

⁸ In this case, a full-page photograph of Bloomfield is included on the page opposite the dedication.

⁹ As with Dr. Burkhardt, in this case too the dedication was made ‘respectfully and affectionately’.

¹⁰ Beyond the usual supporting cast of copyeditors and proofreaders, and the obituary and review authors themselves, several other colleagues contributed to making this issue a reality, and acknowledgment of their contributions is in order: Nick Clements, Jennifer Cole, Ken de Jong, and Pat Keating all offered very helpful comments and guidance on Peter's final paper, and Kathleen Currie Hall and Paul Newman provided some invaluable technical advice. I also thank Margaret Reynolds of the LSA main office for helping to put the request for the formal dedication before the Executive Committee of the LSA and the Executive Committee for granting the request.

¹¹ For other interesting perspectives on Peter, I draw readers' attention to the interview with him prepared by Alan S. Kaye and published in Semiotica in 2006 (‘An interview with Peter Ladefoged’, Semiotica 168.319–34).