Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin
Sergei Anatoljewitsch Starostin ( Russian Серге́й Анато́льевич Ста́ростин ; born March 24, 1953 in Moscow ; † September 30, 2005 in Moscow) was a Russian linguist . He worked in the field of comparative linguistics and hypothesized a Dene-Caucasian macro family .
life and work
Starostin played a key role in the reconstruction of the proto- languages of several Eurasian language families, including Turkish , Mongolian , Tungusian , Altaic , Sinotibetic , Yenisian and North Caucasian . His extensive knowledge of these language families and their proto-languages led to the formulation of the Sino-Caucasian hypothesis in 1984 , in which Starostin combined Sinotibetic, Yenisei and North Caucasian into a genetic unit . This macro family was expanded in 1991 by Sergei L. Nikolayev to include the North American Na-Dené languages and thus developed into the Dene-Caucasian macro family . Basque and some ancient oriental languages were later added by others .
In the year of his death (2005) Starostin was a professor at the Russian State University in Moscow, visiting professor at the Santa Fe Institute and frequent visiting professor at the Dutch University of Leiden , where he received an honorary doctorate in June 2005. Since 1985 he has worked on the Tower of Babel , a project to store huge amounts of etymological data on most of the Eurasian language families.
Sergei Starostin died suddenly on September 30, 2005 of a heart attack shortly after a lecture in Moscow.
Main work
- 1984 Gipoteza o genetičeskich svjazjach sino-tibetskich jazykov s enisejskimi i severnokavkazskimi jazykami. ( Hypothesis of the genetic relationship between Sinotibetic and the Yenisan and North Caucasian languages. ) Lingvističeskaja reconstrukcija i drevnenejšaja istorija vostoka 4, Moscow. (English version in Shevoroshkin 1991.)
- 1989 Nostratic and Sino-Caucasian. In: Vitaly Shevoroshkin (Ed.): Explorations in Language Macrofamilies. Brockmeyer, Bochum.
- 1991 Altajskaja problema i proischoždenije japonskogo jazyka. Moscow. (Attempt to demonstrate the genetic unity of Altai, including Korean and Japanese.)
literature
- The journal Mother Tongue regularly covers Deno-Caucasian topics. The articles in issues I - V (1995–1999) are particularly important.
- Vitaly Shevoroshkin (Ed.): Dene-Sino-Caucasian Languages. Brockmeyer, Bochum 1991.
(Contains the English translation of Starostin's original Russian article on Sino-Caucasian from 1984 and the article Sino-Caucasian Languages in America by Sergei Nikolajev, in which the Na-Dené languages are added to Sino-Caucasian.) - Vitaly Shevoroshkin and Alexis Manaster Ramer: Some Recent Work in the Remote Relations of Languages. In: Sydney M. Lamb and E. Douglas Mitchell (Eds.): Sprung from Some Common Source. Investigations into the Prehistory of Languages. Stanford University Press, Stanford (Calif.) 1991.
- Martine Irma Robbeets: Is Japanese Related to Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic? Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2005.
See also
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Starostin, Sergei Anatolyevich |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Starostin, Sergey Anatolevich (English transcription); Старостин, Сергей Анатольевич (Cyrillic) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Russian linguist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 24, 1953 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Moscow |
| DATE OF DEATH | September 30, 2005 |
| Place of death | Moscow |