Studies of linguistics and philosophy at Berlin and Oxford; MA 1974 (TU Berlin); Dr.phil. 1980 (Ruhr Universität Bochum); Habilitation 1992 (Universität Osnabrück). University teaching and research posts as well as visiting appointments between 1974 and 1988 at Oxford, Nijmegen, Harvard, Tilburg, Brussels, Cologne. From 1988-2000 with IBM Germany as a manager in research, development, and services. Since Oct. 2000 Professor of Computational Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrück.