My charge in preparing this essay is to comment on “the current state of Hispanic linguistics within the American university.” Any linguist knows that this phrase can be parsed in several ways. My first take is:[[[the current state of [Hispanic linguistics]] within the American university]. Parsing out [Hispanic linguistics], surely this term requires neither definition nor extended comment. The intersection of linguistics and Spanish and its sibling languages has always been a fruitful zone of intellectual foment, and top linguistic theoreticians working primarily with other languages have incorporated essential insights from Spanish into their models. Turning then to [[the current state of [Hispanic linguistics]], from the perspective of scholarship the state couldn’t be better. Linguists dealing with Spanish—mostly residing in Spanish departments and programs—have always been on the leading edge of linguistic theory and practice, and the upward trajectory continues unabated. Top linguistics journals are filled with the contributions of these linguists, important new journals have emerged to absorb the outpouring of high quality scholarship (eg Spanish in Context, Revista