Present volume of Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae publishes a selection of papers presented at the 13 th International Colloquium on Vulgar and Late Latin - Latin vulgaire - latin tardif XIII (September 3-7, 2018, Faculty of Humanities of the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary, cf. http://lvlt13.elte.hu/) organized by the Latin Department of the Institute of Ancient and Classical Studies of the Eötvös Loránd University in collaboration with the 'Momentum' Research Group for Computational Latin Dialectology at the Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.¹

This Colloquium was realized as the thirteenth one in a series of Colloquia devoted to all linguistic aspects of Late and Vulgar Latin (including the transition from Latin to Romance), and it was dedicated to the memory of József Herman, who organized the first Colloque international sur le Latin Vulgaire et Latin Tardif (Latin vulgaire - latin tardif I) in Pécs, Hungary, 1985. Since then the colloquia have been held regularly for more than three decades. After Pécs (1985), Bologna (1988), Innsbruck (1991), Caen (1994), Heidelberg (1997), Helsinki (2000), Sevilla (2003), Oxford (2006), Lyon (2009), Bergamo (2012), Oviedo (2014) and Uppsala (2016), the Colloquium returned to Hungary, Budapest in 2018.

Accordingly, on the five days (Monday through Friday) of the 2018 Colloquium in Budapest, 83 papers were presented by 87 speakers from 20 countries within and outside Europe.² Beside the linguistic papers, there was a presentation on the Lapidarium of the Hungarian National Museum during the opening session on Monday, delivered by Ádám Szabó, director of the Lapidarium itself. Out of the 83 linguistic papers, this volume publishes 54 revised and peer-reviewed studies that cover practically all possible research areas of Vulgar and Late Latin linguistics. To verify that, just take a look at the thematic index of this volume.

The Colloquium was dedicated to the memory of József Herman. Accordingly, after this foreword you can find the speech of Gualtiero Calboli, Honorary President of the Comité international pour l'étude du latin vulgaire et tardif, which he delivered at the memorial reception. What is more, in memory of József Herman (1924–2005), his widow, Marianne Bakró-Nagy and the Comité international pour l'étude du latin vulgaire et tardif established a prize for the best contribution by a young researcher at the biennial International Colloquium on Late and Vulgar Latin - Latin vulgaire - latin tardif (for the criteria of receiving the prize, see http://lvlt13.elte.hu/ index.php/herman-award/). There were eleven candidates, and the first ever winner was Simon Aerts from Ghent University with his paper "Latin tense and aspect in the writings of Gregory of Tours: a Systemic Functional analysis of tense usage in the Historia Francorum". The next prize will be awarded at the 14th International Colloquium on Late and Vulgar Latin (Latin vulgaire - latin tardif XIV) that will be held at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of Ghent University (Belgium) from 31 August to 4 September (Monday through Friday), 2020, organized by Prof. Giovanbattista Galdi and his team (cf. https://www.lvlt14.ugent.be/).

My only remaining task is to give acknowledgement as due. I wish to express my gratitude first of all to everyone who presented their papers at the colloquium. I would also like to thank the colleagues who chaired the sessions. I am also indebted to the members of the Comité international pour l'étude du latin vulgaire et tardif (cf. www.unibg.it/lvlt) for contributing to the realization of this Colloquium in multiple ways, inter alia by evaluating the papers of the applicants for the József Herman Award.

I wish to express my gratitude to professor László Borhy, rector of the Eötvös Loránd University, to professor Gábor Sonkoly, dean of the Faculty of Humanities, to professor Gualtiero Calboli, Honorary President of the Comité international pour l'étude du latin vulgaire et tardif for opening the Colloquium, to professor Zsigmond Ritoók (ordinary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) for contributing to the organisation of the reception offered by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and to professor Marianne Bakró-Nagy for sponsoring the József Herman Award.

I am immensely grateful to Benedek Varga, director general of the Hungarian National Museum and Ádám Szabó, director of the Lapidarium for supporting the Colloquium by letting us have the opening session and the welcome reception in the unique atmosphere of the beautiful Roman Lapidarium, where even a concert was staged by the István Wéber Female Choir; we are much obliged to all its members and their leader Katalin Kismartony for the unforgettable experience.

I wish to express my gratitude to András Kertész, President of the I. Section of Linguistics and Literary Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences for providing a reception in memory of József Herman at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, where speeches commemorating József Herman were held by Gualtiero Calboli, honorary president of the Comité international pour l'étude du latin vulgaire et tardif, Sándor Kiss, member of the Comité international pour l'étude du latin vulgaire et tardif, and Zsigmond Ritoók, ordinary member of the Hungarian Academy of Science. I am indebted to all of them for their kind contribution.

I am deeply thankful to Orsolya Láng, director of Aquincum Museum and Ar- cheological Park for providing free entrance to participants. The Aquincum guided tour conducted in three languages, the conference dinner, the river cruise on the Danube, and the post-conference excursion with a full day of sightseeing in Budapest were all organised by Nóra Adamikné Juhász (cf. http://www.budapestguidata.hu), who also acted as a guide in some cases, and to whom I am greatly indebted.

I am enormously grateful to my colleagues and students at the Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, especially to Júlia Nemes, who also created and manages the website of the colloquium at http://lvlt13.elte.hu/, Zsuzsanna Sarkadi, who revised the English text of the colloquium website and the conference accessories, and Andrea Barta and Dániel Seres for their indispensable help in creating the conference accessories, which all bear the unique logo of the Colloquium. The logo was designed by Júlia Nemes and Katalin Nemes, and it shows an inscription from a beautiful plate belonging to the famous Seuso Treasure. I would also like to thank all our assistants, my colleagues, and students who helped with the organization of this colloquium and during the conference, especially Szilvia Nemes (who also took a great number of photos during the event), Nóra Zelenai, Ágnes Jekl, Sára Sánta, Tünde Vágási, Dominika Kovács, Ákos Zimonyi, Attila Gonda, and many others whom I cannot all list here. I wish to express my gratitude also to László Takács, chief editor of the Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae for accepting and publishing, and to Andrea Barta and Edit Krahling for co-editing the following 54 papers in the present volume of this renowned journal, which previously published three vital studies of József Herman.³