Sergei Starostin

Sergei Anatolyevich Starostin
Starostin at the conference in memory of V. M. Illich-Svitych on October 21–23, 2004
Born	(1953-03-24)March 24, 1953 Moscow, Russian SFSR
Died	September 30, 2005(2005-09-30) (aged 52) Moscow, Russia
Children	Georgiy Starostin
Academic background
Influences	Aharon Dolgopolsky, Vladislav Illich-Svitych, Andrey Zaliznyak, Vladimir Dybo, Sergei Yakhontov
Academic work
School or 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.^{[citation needed]}