Sergei Starostin

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Dr. Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin, Cyrillic Серге́й Анато́льевич Ста́ростин, (March 24, 1953 – September 30, 2005^[1]) was a Russian historical linguist and scholar, best known for his work with hypothetical proto-languages, especially the controversial theory of Altaic languages and the formulation of the Dene-Caucasian hypothesis that assumes that Northwest Caucasian, Northeast Caucasian, Yeniseian, Sino-Tibetan, and Na-Dene all have a genetic relationship. He was instrumental in the reconstruction of Proto-Kiranti, Proto-Tibeto-Burman, Proto-Yenisseian, Proto-North-Caucasian, and Proto-Altaic. He devoted much of his later life to developing the theory, originated by Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur Khan in 17th century, but really revived by Gustaf John Ramstedt in the early 20th century, that Japanese is an Altaic language.

Since 1985, Starostin had been developing STARLING, which is a linguist's workplace software.

At the time of his death, he was a professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities, a visiting professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and a frequent guest lecturer at Leiden University in the Netherlands, where he was awarded the degree of doctor honoris causa in June 2005.

Starostin died of a heart attack on September 30, 2005, shortly after delivering a lecture in Moscow. His son, George Starostin, is also a linguist, as well as being well-known on the internet as a hobbyist music critic.

[edit] See also

• Dene-Sino-Caucasian
• Dene-Caucasian languages
• North Caucasian languages

[edit] References

1. ^ The Tower of Babel

[edit] External links

• The Tower of Babel "a massive resource, containing huge amounts of information on almost all of Eurasia's language families"