Victor A. Friedman (Ph.D. University of Chicago) <vfriedm@midway.uchicago.edu> is Andrew W. Mellon Professor and Chair in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago, where he also holds an appointment in the Department of Linguistics and an associate appointment in the Department of Anthropology. He is president of the U.S. national committee of the International Association for Southeast European Studies and vice-president of the U.S. national committee of the International Committee of Slavists. Professor Friedman is a member of the Macedonian Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded the "1300 Years of Bulgaria" jubilee medal for contributions to the field of Bulgarian studies(1981) as well as the Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje Gold Plaque Award for Contributions to the field of Macedonian studies (1991). His publications include The Grammatical Categories of the Macedonian Indicative (1977), Linguistic Emblems and Emblematic Languages: On Language as Flag in the Balkans (1999), and more than 200 scholarly articles. His current research is on verbal categories and on sociolinguistics of the languages of the Balkans and the Caucasus.