[2] In 1969, he achieved his habilitation also at the University of Tübingen, where he had been a research assistant at the department of English philology headed by Hans Marchand; in the years 1967–69, he was supported by a postdoctoral scholarship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
In the same year, Brekle was appointed to the chair of general linguistics at the University of Regensburg, which he held until his retirement in 2001.
[3] In 1974/75, he was a visiting professor at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and ten years later at the Université de Paris VII (1984/85).
From 1984 to 1986, Brekle also held the office of the chairman of the German Linguistic Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft).
Between 1978 and 1986, he also served as chairman of the Regensburg county group of the Bavarian branch of the League for the environment and nature conservation (Bund Naturschutz in Bayern).