1979-1984 studied at Leningrad State University (currently, St-Petersburg State University), having majored in the Germanic (Scandinavian) languages and linguistics (MA Thesis in Swedish lexicology)

1984-1990 PhD student at the Altaic department of the Institute of Linguistics (Russian Academy of Sciences, St-Petersburg), specializing in Tungusic languages

 June 1990 defended a doctoral thesis on the Verbal clause patterns in Even (Tungusic) at the Institute of Linguistics (Russian Academy of Sciences, St-Petersburg)

1990-1999 worked as a Researcher at the Altaic department of the Institute of Linguistics (currently, Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, St-Petersburg), specializing in Tungusic languages

1991-2001 Associated Senior Researcher at the Institute for the study of Northern minorities (Russian Academy of Sciences, Yakutsk)

December 1994 to June 1996 Alexander von Humboldt fellow researcher at the Seminar für Orientkunde at the University of Mainz

from 1999 - 2006 a Senior Researcher at the Altaic department of the Institute of Linguistics (Russian Academy of Sciences, St-Petersburg)

from 1.02.2001 to 1.11.2001 Post-doc scholarship at the department of Germanic and general linguistics of the University of Antwerp

May 2002 Defended Habilschrift on aspects of Tungusic (Even) morphosyntax, at the Institute of Linguistics, St-Petersburg

January 2003 joined as a researcher the project “Case cross-linguistically” at the University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands)

February-December 2004 JSPS fellowship at the Kobe University. Research topic (together with A. Ogawa) “Typology of impersonal constructions”

2005-April, 2006 Continued research in a PIONER project “Case cross-linguistically” at the University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands)

From 2007 on a Leading Senior Researcher (“veduschij nauchnyj sotrudnik”) at the Altaic department of the Institute of Linguistics (Russian Academy of Sciences)

From May 2006 till May 2009 An affiliated researcher in the DFG-funded project “Typology of ditransitive constructions” (together with Bernard Comrie and Martin Haspelmath) at Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig)

From May 2009 An affiliated researcher in the DFG-funded project “Typology of valency classes” (together with Bernard Comrie and Martin Haspelmath) at MPI EVA (Leipzig)

From January till June 2010 Visiting Professor at National Institute for Japanese language and Linguistics (NINJAL) in Tokyo, on invitation of Prof. T. Tsunoda.

From October 2010 Visiting Professor (Vertretung W3-Professur) at the department of English and General Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz

From October 2016 Professor (außerplanmäßiger professor) at the department of English and General Linguistics, Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz