Later on, he teamed up with the linguist Sergei Starostin to produce authoritative studies of the Caucasian, Afroasiatic, and Hurro-Urartian languages.

Diakonoff was honored in 2003 with a festschrift volume published in his memory, edited by Lionel Bender, Gábor Takács, and David Appleyard.

In addition to articles on Afro-Asiatic languages, it contains a five-page list of his publications compiled by Takács.

His wife and two sons became well-known researchers and achieved ranks of full professors.

Igor's first wife Nina Dyakonova (1915–2013) was a historian and critic of English literature, with a special interest in English Romantic poetry of the early 19th century (Keats, Byron, Shelley) and its reception in European and Russian literature.