David A. Pharies is Professor of Spanish and Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Florida.  He is the author of over thirty articles and several books on Spanish linguistics, including Structure and Analogy in the Playful Lexicon of Spanish (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1986), Origin and Development of the Ibero-Romance -nc-/-ng- Suffixes (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1990), Diccionario etimológico de los sufijos españoles (Gredos: Madrid, 2002), and Breve historia de la lengua española (also published in English as A Brief History of the Spanish Language) (Chicago: UP, 2007).  He also served as the editor-in-chief for the 5th edition of the University of Chicago Spanish Dictionary (Chicago:UP, 2002).