John M. Lipski is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Spanish Linguistics in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese at the Pennsylvania State University, where he served as department head from 2000 to 2005.  He received his B. A. from Rice University, and his M. A. and Ph. D. from the University of Alberta. His research interests include Spanish phonology, Spanish and Portuguese dialectology and language variation, the linguistic aspects of bilingualism, and the African contribution to Spanish and Portuguese.  He has done fieldwork in Spain (including the Canary Islands), Africa, Brazil and all Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, the Philippines, Guam, and many Spanish-speaking communities within the United States.  His research has been funded by two Fulbright research fellowships, an NEH summer fellowship, a Guggenheim fellowship, a grant from Penn State’s Africana Research Center, and numerous university-internal grants. He has published a number of books and more than 260 articles on all aspects of linguistics, language, and literature. He has served as editor of the journal Hispanic Linguistics, served for six years as associate editor of Hispania for Theoretical Linguistics, and is currently editor of a Georgetown University Press series on Hispanic linguistics.