Brechtje's research centres on how linguistic systems exploit speech sounds to convey different types of meaning. Her 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?

She has 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.

Brechtje welcomes inquiries from potential MPhil and PhD students with research interests relevant to hers.