| Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin | |
| Birth Date: | 24 March 1953 |
| Birth Place: | Moscow, Russian SFSR |
| Death Place: | Moscow, Russia |
| Children: | Georgiy Starostin |
| School Tradition: | Moscow school, historical linguistics |
| Main Interests: | Long-range language reconstruction (especially Nostratic and Dené–Caucasian), glottochronology, accentology (especially Indo-European) |
| Notable Ideas: | Dené–Caucasian hypothesis, reconstruction of Proto-Altaic, Proto-North-Caucasian, Proto-Yeniseian, Proto-Tibeto-Burman, Proto-Kiranti, reconstruction of Old Chinese and Proto-Japanese, advancement of "recalibrated glottochronology" |
| Influenced: | Merritt Ruhlen, John Bengtson |
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.
In 1986, Starostin and Igor M. Diakonoff suggested that the Hurro-Urartian languages belong to the Northeast Caucasian language family. Starostin was also instrumental in the reconstruction of Proto-Kiranti, Proto-Tibeto-Burman, Proto-Yeniseian, Proto-North-Caucasian, and Proto-Altaic. He developed the hypothesis, originated by Abu al-Ghazi Bahadur Khan in the 17th century, but really revived by Gustaf John Ramstedt in the early 20th century, that Japanese is related to the Turkic and Mongolic languages through an "Altaic" family.
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.
See main article: Evolution of Human Languages. Since 1985, Starostin had been developing STARLING,[2] a database management system designed for his website. He was assisted in his work[3] by Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.[4] 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, in Moscow after a lecture at the Russian State University for the Humanities. His son, Georgiy Starostin, is also a linguist.