He is known for proposing Lexicase theory and the East Asian languages macrophylum hypothesis.
[1] In 1988, he published a book, The case for Lexicase, in which he presents a type of dependency grammar that he had developed since the early 1970s.
[2] Starosta also proposed an East Asian linguistic macrophylum.
A paper on his East Asian proposal was published posthumously in 2005.
[1] On July 18, 2002, Starosta died of congestive heart failure in Honolulu, Hawaii.