I was born in 's-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands and studied French and General Linguistics at the University of Utrecht. After four years in the Eurotra machine translation project, sponsored by the European Community, I moved to Basel (Switzerland) in 1991. At the University of Basel I joined the Department of Computer Science, in particular the Word Manager project for the development of reusable morphological dictionaries. I completed my Ph.D. in English Linguistics, with a thesis on morphology, in 1994 and my Habilitation in General Linguistics, with an analysis of computational linguistics in terms of philosophy of science in 2000.

I joined the School of European Languages in Swansea in 2003 where I am based in the Department of Modern Languages (Translation). In March 2004 I organized the conference Terminology, Computing and Translation at Swansea University, for which I also edited the proceedings (Tübingen: Narr, 2006). My recent book on Chomskyan Linguistics and its Competitors is published by Equinox (paperback edition May 2009). In May 2010 I will organize a workshop on Meaning and Lexicalization of Word Formation at the 14th International Morphology Meeting in Budapest.

I am coordinator of the BA Translation degree scheme and deputy coordinator of the MA Translation with Language Technology. In the PhD programme in translation, I am responsible for the branch “Translation and the Lexicon”, and I supervise four PhD students. I have been a member of the Linguist-List Advisory Panel since 2001 and of the Euralex Executive Board since September 2006.

Research Interests

Morphology, especially generative morphology

Computational linguistics, especially machine translation

Translation theory and the use of language technology in translation

Lexicology, especially terminology and electronic dictionaries

Philosophy of science as applied to linguistics, especially Chomskyan linguistics

Last modified 18 February 2010