9 quotes
The long drought in Tibeto-Burman and Sino-Tibetan historical linguistics is over. The field is opening up now as never before.
Benedict's Sino-Tibetan: a rejection of Miller's Conspectus inspection (1975)
There can be no more solemn duty for the comparative linguist than to reconstruct his language family's word for the Supreme Being.
God and the Sino-Tibetan Copula (1985)
The South-East Asian mono-syllable often seems to be bulging at the seams with phonetic material: consonantal, vocalic, and supra-segmental.
The computer will be crucial to handle the etymological information explosion of the future, but machines will never be able to do all the work for us.
On Megalocomparison (1990)
I decided to start with the reproductive system, not only because of its prurient interest but also because it seemed like the point of departure for all things.
Handbook of Proto-Tibeto-Burman (2003)
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.
Lahu bilingual humor (1969)
I decided to select the Reproductive System as a pilot project, not merely for its prurient interest, but also because this semantic field tends to be neglected in historical linguistic studies, despite the fact that it is particularly rich in metaphorical associations with other areas of the lexicon.
The Tibeto-Burman Reproductive System: Toward an Etymological Thesaurus (2008)
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.
Rhinoglottophilia: the mysterious connection between nasality and glottality (1975)
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.
Proto-languages and proto-sprachgefühl (1982)