Matisoff

Matisoff is a surname. It has been borne by several individuals, most prominently James A. Matisoff (born 1937), an American linguist noted for his research on Tibeto-Burman languages and the Sino-Tibetan language family. Matisoff's work spans field studies, descriptive grammars, and theoretical contributions to historical linguistics and language classification. His influential publications include overviews and classifications of Sino-Tibetan, and he has been a central figure in debates about the prehistory and phylogeny of this language group. The surname is relatively uncommon and is most frequently encountered in bibliographic references related to James A. Matisoff.