Dictionary — ontologydriven

megalocomparison en · NOUN

From megalo- + comparison, coined by Matisoff (1990) in a critique of Joseph Greenberg's "mass comparison" (see quotation below).

(derogatory, historical, often, uncommon, uncountable) Long-range comparison; especially, far-fetched long-range comparison that cannot sufficiently demonstrate any genetic relationship.
- There have been many recent broadsides on megalocomparison, and those who still think them inappropriate may find this paper a revelation[…] 1994, J. T. Katz, “Review of Explanation in Historical Linguistics by G. W. Davis & G. K. Iverson”, in Language, volume 70, number 1, →DOI, pages 199–200:
- Megalocomparison takes on any more remote relationship, where sound-correspondences are not regular and putative cognates are few, so that chance rivals genetic relationship as the explanation for perceived similarities. [1990, J. A. Matisoff, “On Megalocomparison”, in Language, volume 66, number 1, →DOI, pages 106–120:
- It seems to be part of a larger project of megalo-comparison whose aim is ultimately to reduce the number of language families in the world to a much smaller number than is now normally accepted. 2009, J. Norman, “A New Look at Altaic [Review of Etymological Dictionary of the Altaic Languages by S. Starostin, A. Dybo, O. Mudrak, I. Gruntov, & V. Glumov]”, in Journal of the American Oriental Society, volume 129, number 1, pages 83–89: