(Redirected from S.A. Starostin)
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
proto-languages, especially the
altaic languages and the 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
Abu-l-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 suddenly 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.
See also
★
Dene-Sino-Caucasian
★
Dene-Caucasian languages
★
North Caucasian languages
References
1. The Tower of Babel
External links
★
The Tower of Babel "a massive resource, containing huge amounts of information on almost all of Eurasia's language families"