Mário A. Perini holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Texas and did postdoctoral work at the University of Illinois. He taught Linguistics and Portuguese at three Brazilian universities (UFMG, UNICAMP and PUC-Minas) and two American ones (Illinois and Mississippi). To date, he has published twelve books on Linguistics and on the Portuguese language, including the first ever grammar of spoken Brazilian Portuguese. His main areas of interest are Portuguese Grammar, Cognition, Construction Grammars, Methodology, and Linguistic Theory and Analysis. He is currently developing research on verb valencies at Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil (UFMG), where he leads a project involving researchers from four Brazilian universities; the project aims at the construction of a valency dictionary of Brazilian Portuguese.