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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.

— James Matisoff Proto-languages and proto-sprachgefühl (1982)

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More quotes by James Matisoff

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)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: James Matisoff (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.