...the more I learn about Lahu the less I think I know. It has seemed that the more fluently I came to speak the language, the more apt people were t… - James Alan Matisoff

I suggest that the reconstruction of PTB [Proto-Tibeto-Burman] is a noble enterprise, where a spirit of competitive territoriality is out of place. We should pool our knowledge and encourage each other to venture outside of our specialized niches, so that we begin to appreciate the full range of Tibeto-Burman languages — a family as vast and diversified as Indo-European.

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.

Rhinoglottophilia–an affinity between the feature of nasality and the articulatory involvement of the glottis–is more prevalent than is generally realized. Although it sounds like a disease, or even a perversion, rhinoglottophilia is actually quite a benign and natural condition. It is of interest chiefly because it is not obvious why there should be such an affinity at all.