Professor Brechtje Post

Jesus College
  • Professor of Phonetics and Phonology
  • Co-Director of the Language Sciences Interdisciplinary Research Centre
  • Fellow of Jesus College
Available to supervise doctoral students
Available to supervise masters students
Professor Brechtje Post

Contact

About

After completing my PhD Tonal and Phrasal Structures in French Intonation under the supervision of Carlos Gussenhoven and Haike Jacobs in Nijmegen in 2000, I took up my first post-doc position with Francis Nolan and Esther Grabe on the project Intonational Variation in the British Isles (also known as IViE) here in the Phonetics Lab. A second post-doc in Lorraine Tyler's Centre for Speech, Language and the Brain gave me the opportunity to venture into psycholinguistics and neuroimaging. Several short-term teaching and research positions preceded my appointment as Senior Research Associate at the Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics. This post was converted to a University Lectureship when the Centre was merged with the Department of Linguistics in 2011.

Other academic appointments
  • Director, Cambridge Language Sciences Interdisciplinary Research Centre, University of Cambridge (since 2020)
  • ERC Remote Referee, European Research Council Executive Agency (since 2015)
  • Member, Standing Committee Phonetics and Phonology in Europe (since 2013)
  • Member, R&D team Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisbo (since 2012)
  • Member, ESRC Peer Review College (since 2010)
  • Fellow, Jesus College, Cambridge (since 2008)
  • Admissions Tutor for the Arts, Jesus College, Cambridge (2008-2018)
  • Fellow Commoner, Jesus College, Cambridge (2007-2008)
  • Academic visitor, Phonetics Laboratory, University of Oxford (2003-2004)
  • Visiting Lecturer, Department of English and Linguistics, University of Westminster (2003-2004)
  • Visiting research fellow, Max Planck Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, Leipzig (2003)
  • Senior Member, Wolfson College, Cambridge (2000-2008)

 

Professional memberships

Philological Society, ISCA Speech Prosody Special Interest Group (SProSIG), Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen, British Association of Academic Phoneticians, International Phonetic Association

Research

Research Interests

My research centres on how linguistic systems exploit speech sounds to convey different types of meaning. My focus is primarily on prosody: intonation, accentuation, rhythm, and phrasing. Drawing on a variety of disciplines (phonetics, phonology, psycholinguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and computational linguistics), this research addresses questions like:

  • How do prosodic structures differ cross-linguistically, and how do linguistic systems constrain prosodic structure?
  • What cross-linguistic variation can we expect to observe in the phonetic realisation of prosodic structure?
  • What are the neural and cognitive underpinnings of prosody?
  • How do children acquire the relevant mappings between phonetics, phonology, and other parts of the linguistic system that are at play?
  • What role does prosody play in language learning in early and late bilinguals?

I have also published on: L1 acquisition of segmental properties, speech perception in noise, L2 pronunciation assessment, transcription and methodology for prosodic research, and morphological processing in speech comprehension.

Research grants

For project descriptions, see the listings on current and past research projects tabs at the top of this page.

Project Funding Dates PI/Coordinator LABEX Empirical foundations of linguistics French ANR (€9M) 2011 - 2020 Christian Puech (PRES Paris Cité) EF Education First Research Lab for Applied Language Learning SIGNUM International (£1.3M) 2016 - 2021 Dora Alexopolou (TAL) Hiraeth: An arts outreach programme for unaccompanied asylum seeking children in Cambridgeshire Arts and Humanities Impact Fund (£7K) 2019 Brechtje Post (TAL) Developing a large scale online study of L1 and L2 speech perception  Language Sciences Incubator Fund, Isaac Newton Trust (£3K) 2019 Brechtje Post (TAL)

Multilingual early childhood education and care for young refugee children 

ErasmusPlus (€165K) 2016 - 2019 Jeroen Aarssen (Sardes BV, The Netherlands) Multilingualism for well-being: defining routes to impact among community language learners ESRC Impact Acceleration Award (£8K) 2017 - 2018 Napoleon Katsos (TAL) Neural correlates of intonation  Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme (£9K) 2014 - 2016 Brechtje Post (TAL)

The acquisition of consonant timing: a study in cross-linguistic micro-variation

British Academy & Leverhulme (SG122210) (10K) 2013 - 2016 Elinor Payne (University of Oxford) English Profile Pronunciation Project Cambridge Assessment (~£7.5K) 2011 - 2015 Brechtje Post (TAL), Evelina Galaczi (Cambridge Assessment) Interactive Atlas of the European Portuguese Prosody (InAPoP)

Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (PTDC/CLE-LIN/119787/2010) (€103)

2012 - 2015 Sónia Frota (University of Lisbon) The Education First Cambridge Learner Corpus of English - a data driven approach to second language learning Cambridge Newton Trust, Education First (£180K) 2011 - 2013 Dora Alexopolou (TAL) Categories and gradience in intonation: Evidence from linguistics and neurobiology ESRC First Grant (RES-061-25-0347) (£352K) 2009 - 2012 Brechtje Post (TAL) Off-site and internet-based linguistic and executive functions research in bilingual children  Cambridge Humanities Research Grants Scheme (£15K) 2011 - 2012 Napoleon Katsos (TAL) Sound to Sense

EC Marie Curie Research Training Network (MRTN-CT-2006-035561) (£2.8M)

2007 - 2011 Sarah Hawkins (Linguistics) A cross-linguistic study of intonational development in young infants and children British Academy (SG51777) (£7K) 2009 - 2010 Brechtje Post (TAL) Prosody in Grammar French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (€220K) 2006 - 2010 Jean-Marie Marandin (CNRS Paris VII) The acquisition of intonation in Catalan, Spanish and English Generalitat de Catalunya (Batista i Roca, 2009 PBR 00018) (€12K) 2009 - 2010 Pilar Prieto (ICREA/Universitat Pompeu Fabra) A transcription system for prosody and phonological modelling  British Academy and the French Centre National de Recherches Scientifiques (£7K) 2006 - 2008 Brechtje Post (TAL)

L1 acquisition of rhythm in Catalan, Spanish and English

Generalitat de Catalunya (Batista i Roca, 2007 PBR 29) (€9K) 2007 - 2008 Pilar Prieto (ICREA/Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) Different phonological structures in prosody? British Academy (SG40478) (£7.5K) 2005 Brechtje Post (TAL)

 

I welcome inquiries from potential MPhil and PhD students.

PhD Supervisees Name Thesis title Emily Lau Dissecting and Synthesizing Dramatic Affect (co-supervisor Dr Kate Knill, Engineering) Maddy Rees The effects of individual and contextual factors on the relationship between speech production and perception systems in Spanish/English bilingual speakers (co-supervisor Dr Matt Davis, MRC CBU) Yibing Shi Tone sandhi across Chinese Wu dialects Julia Schwarz Separate, Combined or Parallel Routes? An Interdisciplinary Approach to Complex Word Processing (co-supervisor Dr Mirjana Bozic, Experimental Psychology) Tim Laméris L2 Acquisition of Lexical Tones and the Role of the L1: A Categorical and Neural Approach Jasper Sim Hong Phonological acquisition of contact varieties of English in simultaneous bilinguals Yixin Zhang The phonetics and phonology of Mandarin neutral tone (co-supervisor Dr Elaine Schmidt, Cambridge Assessment) Calbert Graham (2014) Japanese and Spanish L1 adult speakers’ L2 acquisition of English prosody Aike Li (2014) L2 rhythm development by Mandarin Chinese learners of English Elaine Schmidt (2014) The acquisition of prosody in Spanish-English bilingual children Margaret Zellers (2011) Prosodic detail and topic structure in discourse

 

Teaching and supervision

Available to supervise doctoral students
Available to supervise masters students

I normally teach on Li6 Phonetics and Li16 Psycholinguistics, MPhil Phonetics, and the MPhil Lent term course Experimental Phonetics and Phonology.

I am course contact for Li6 Phonetics and the MPhil Lent term course Experimental Phonetics and Phonology (2020-21).