- 20.12.1961 born in Leningrad (St.-Petersburg)
- 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) PIONIER Project Case cross-linguistically
- 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.
- October 2010 - September 2015 Visiting Professor (Vertretung W3-Professur) at the Department of English and Linguistics - Language Typology, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz (replacement of Prof. Walter Bisang)
- From October 2015 Researcher (wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at the Department of English
- From October 2016 apl. Professor at the Department of English and Linguistics - Language Typology, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz