Marc Brunelle

Marc Brunelle is a full Professor in the Department of Linguistics within the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ottawa. He serves as co-director of the Sound Patterns Laboratory (Laboratoire des structures sonores), a state-of-the-art phonetics facility funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation. His academic profile reflects deep engagement with linguistic theory and empirical research focused on sound systems across languages.

Professor Brunelle's research centers on phonological theory, phonetics, tone and intonation systems, sound change phenomena, and the effects of language contact on sound systems. His work primarily investigates Southeast Asian languages, with special emphasis on Vietnamese and Cham language families. He has made significant contributions to understanding register systems, phonological change processes like transphonologization, and the relationship between production and perception in tone languages. His research combines theoretical linguistics with empirical laboratory methods and extensive fieldwork documentation.

Analysis of his recent publications reveals a strong focus on phonological systems across Mainland Southeast Asia, particularly examining register phenomena, voicing contrasts, and tonal systems in languages like Raglai, Jarai, Chrau, and Chru. His work frequently employs production and perception methodologies to investigate phonological change in progress, with particular attention to how linguistic variation manifests across different dialects and speech communities. A consistent theme throughout his scholarship is the documentation and analysis of endangered Southeast Asian languages, especially those within the Chamic subgroup.

Professor Brunelle actively supervises Master's and PhD students working on prosody and phonetics/phonology of Southeast Asian languages. He has developed specialized software tools for Vietnamese language processing, including the Montreal Corpus tools for automatic conversion of quốc ngữ (Vietnamese script) to the International Phonetic Alphabet and for forced-alignment of Vietnamese transcriptions and recordings. His research program demonstrates sustained collaboration with scholars across multiple institutions and countries, particularly with Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian researchers.

The Sound Patterns Laboratory he co-directs represents a significant research infrastructure for phonetic investigation, supporting both his own research program and that of his students and collaborators. His work bridges theoretical linguistics with language documentation efforts, particularly for endangered languages of Southeast Asia where he has conducted extensive fieldwork.