Sergei Starostin

Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin (Russian: Серге́й Анато́льевич Ста́ростин; March 24, 1953 – September 30, 2005)^[1] was a Russian historical linguist and philologist, perhaps best known for his reconstructions of hypothetical proto-languages, including his work on the controversial Altaic theory, the formulation of the Dené–Caucasian hypothesis, and the proposal of a Borean language of still earlier date. None of his proposed macrofamilies have seen wide-scale acceptance in the linguistic community (and are mostly seen as implausible), though his proposals remain influential outside of academia. He was also the author of a widely respected reconstruction of Old Chinese.^{[citation needed]}

Theories

In 1986, Starostin and

The Dené–Caucasian hypothesis proposes that Northwest Caucasian, Northeast Caucasian, Yeniseian, Sino-Tibetan, and Na-Dené form a single, higher-order language family. According to Starostin, the Dené–Caucasian and Austric macrofamilies, together with the Nostratic macrofamily (as envisaged by Vladislav Illich-Svitych, with some modifications), can further be linked at an earlier stage, which Starostin called the Borean (i.e. 'Northern') languages.

Evolution of Human Languages project

Since 1985, Starostin had been developing STARLING,

Starostin died of a heart attack on September 30, 2005, in Moscow after a lecture at the Russian State University for the Humanities. His son, Georgiy Starostin, is also a linguist.

Selected works

• 1986. Co-authored with Igor M. Diakonoff. Hurro-Urartian as an Eastern Caucasian Language. Munich: R. Kitzinger.
• 1991. Altajskaja problema i proisxoždenie japonskogo jazyka, 'The Altaic Problem and the Origin of the Japanese Language'. Moscow: Nauka.
• 1995. "The historical position of Bai".^[5] Moskovskij Lingvisticheskij Zhurnal 1, 174-190. Moscow.
• 2003. Co-authored with
  ISBN 9004131531
  .
• 2005. Co-authored with
  ISBN 5-7695-1445-0
  .

• Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics

Notes

References

• JSTOR 23754153
  .
• Bengtson, John D.; Blažek, Václav (2005). "Obituary: Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin" (PDF). Journal of Indo-European Studies. 33 (3/4): 307–314.
• JSTOR 41222651
  .

• The Tower of Babel, a large linguistics database built largely by Sergei and George Starostin