He graduated in 1981 with a degree in
Romance linguistics from the
University of Erlangen–Nuremberg, a subject in which he earned a
Doctor of Philosophy with Heinrich Kuen, and landed at the University of Cagliari as a lecturer in the
Catalan language in the Faculty of Education. He was then a lecturer at the universities of
Sassari,
Bonn,
Florence, and
Munich; since 1993 he has been back in Cagliari, initially as a lecturer in the history of the
Italian language, and since 1996 as a lecturer in Sardinian linguistics. He worked more on the study and teaching of the Sardinian language, but also turned his attention to Catalan,
Spanish,
Ladin and
Italian. ==Books==