Sergei Starostin
Dr.
Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin,
Cyrillic Серге́й Анато́льевич Ста́ростин, (
March 24,
1953 "
September 30,
2005) was a
Russian
historical linguist and
scholar, best known for his work with
proto-languages, and for his formulation of the
Dene-Caucasian hypothesis. 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
Roy Miller, that
Japanese is an
Altaic language.
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 suddenly of a
heart attack on
September 30,
2005, shortly after delivering a lecture in
Moscow.
His son,
Georgiy Starostin, is an accomplished linguist in his own right and a prolific reviewer of rock music.
*
Dene-Sino-Caucasian*
Dene-Caucasian languages*
North Caucasian languages*
The Tower of Babel "a massive resource, containing huge amounts of information on almost all of Eurasia's language families"
