The severe difficulties in attempting a rigorous reconstruction of Proto-Tibeto-Burman on this basis [of scant data] have not prevented certain hardy… - James Alan Matisoff

Bilingual humor may be viewed as a relatively benign response to the frustrations inherent in living in such a linguistically and racially heterogeneous region as the hills and valleys of backwoods Southeast Asia.

Semantic shifting goes by many different names. In his pioneering article, Benedict 1939 calls it "semantic differentiation." In his article on Gnau, Lewis calls it "referent slippage." American Indianists have traditionally called it "gloss shifting." The latter term has the merit of recognizing that the meanings given in dictionaries are only the constructs of the lexicographer's mind, and do not necessarily exactly mirror the meanings "in the minds of the native speakers," whether they are now long dead or still alive.

All this having been said, if I were to pick a single word to describe [Joseph] Greenberg's apparent motivation in doing megalocomparison, it would have to be columbicubiculomania-a compulsion to stick things into pigeonholes, to leave nothing unclassified. Greenberg gives the impression that the highest intellectual activity is the act of classification itself, regardless of the nature of the evidence upon which the classification rests.