Acknowledgements
Our greatest thanks go to the many speakers of South American indigenous languages who have dedicated considerable time and effort to share their knowledge of the languages they speak with linguists from many parts of the world. Without these speakers' commitment, patience, and good will, the study of these important languages would be impossible.
Many linguists have contributed unpublished phonological inventories to the SAPhon database or have helped by sending us their own published works. In these cases the provider of the information is credited/cited on the page for the corresponding phonological inventory. We want to take this opportunity to thank them once again for their valuable contribution.
In addition, a number of colleagues have assisted in the collection of phonological inventories from published sources, have shared difficult to obtain resources with us, or have helped resolve confusing issues in linguistic classification. We take this opportunity to thank them, including: Willem F. H. Adelaar, Joshua Birchall, Martine Bruil, Lyle Campbell, Mateus Carvalho, María Chavarría, Mily Crevels, Spike Gildea, Antoine Guillaume, Harald Hammarström, Helder Ferreira, Sergio Meira, Yoram Meroz, Denny Moore, Janice Nuckolls, Zachary O'Hagan, Luis Oquendo, Erin O'Rourke, Simon Overall, Eduardo Ribeiro, Luis Miguel Rojas Berscia, Françoise Rose, Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada, Frank Seifart, Kristine Stenzel, Adam Tallman, Pilar Valenzuela, and Leo Wetzels. (Please do not be shy about reminding us if we have inadvertently left your name off this list!) We wish to single out Mark Donohue for sharing with us the 'exhaustive inventory coding principle' that underlies the SAPhon database, and Ron Sprouse for sharing his technical expertise with us during the early stages of this project.