After finishing primary school and classical gymnasium in Zagreb, he enrolled the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Zagreb where he graduated in 1972 in theoretical linguistics, Latin, Ancient Greek and their literatures.
Since 1972, he worked as a professor of Latin and Ancient Greek in a primary school, and from 1974 on at the Classical Gymnasium in Zagreb.
In 1977 he received a full-time job, first as a teacher assistant, then as a docent (since 1977), and finally as a regular professor in 1986, re-elected in 1992, at the Department of General linguistics at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb.
Besides the regular teaching activity in undergraduate and postgraduate[2] courses, he gave lectures in Prague (CEU), Paris (Sorbonne), Trieste (Scuola superiore per traduttori e interpreti), Sarajevo, Novi Sad and elsewhere.
He served as a mentor for numerous PhD and MA students in Zagreb and Ljubljana.