Dr. Renée Lambert-Brétière is Associate Professor of Linguistics, French, and Intercultural Communication at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Her research focus is on the relationship between language and culture, and on fieldwork-based documentation and description of lesser-known languages, from a typological discourse-based functional and cognitive linguistics perspective. She works on languages exhibiting very different typological profile, ranging from a mildly agglutinative language where meaning plays a large role in the grammar (Kwoma, East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea), to a polysynthetic language exhibiting an intricate morphological system (Innu, Northeastern Quebec and Labrador in Canada), to an isolating language making use of complex syntactic constructions (Fon, Republic of Benin), and to languages formed by the contact between West-African languages and European languages (Caribbean Creoles).
Her most recent research project, Documentation linguistique de l’innu, was featured on the The Academic Minute hosted by NPR.
RECENT COURSES TAUGHT
The World of Language: Social and Cultural Aspects
World Language Communities
Introduction to Language Structures
Syntax
Linguistic Typology
Language Planning
Language and Cognition
Contact Languages: Pidgins, Creoles and Mixed Languages
Sociolinguistics and Dialectology
Sociopolitical History of French (in French)
The Ethnography of Communication
PUBLICATIONS (Since 2015)
BOOKS
Cottier, Jean-François and Renée Lambert-Brétière (Eds). 2017. À la recherche d’un signe perdu: Jean-Baptiste de La Brosse, S.J., Éléments de la langue montagnaise (1768), Aix-en-Provence: Chemins de tr@verse.
JOURNAL ARTICLES/CHAPTERS
Lambert-Brétière, Renée & Yvette Mollen. 2024. “Patrimoine, commémoration et instrumentalisation sociopolitique des langues autochtones.” Patrimoines. Les carnets du RéPUQ, No. 1, pp. 13-16.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2021. “How to Smell without a Verb “To Smell” in Fon.” In Łukasz Jędrzejowski and Przemysław Staniewski (Eds), The Linguistics of Olfaction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2019. “The Bloomfieldian Heritage in Algonquian Linguistics: The verbal complex in Innu.” Faits de langue/Journal of Language Diversity, Vol. 50, No. 2, pp. 95-112.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2018. “Jean-Baptiste de La Brosse, Montanicæ linguæ Elementa: Une grammaire innue du XVIIIe siècle.” Littoral, No. 13, pp. 79-85.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2018 “Savoir culturel et langue en danger: l’exemple du rituel de l’igname chez les Kwoma.” Journal de la société des Océanistes, Vol. 146.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2018. “Les paroles s’envolent, les écrits restent: l’archivage du patrimoine oral autochtone.” In Luc Vaillancourt and Sandrine Tailleur (Eds), Voix autochtones dans les écrits de la Nouvelle-France. Paris, Éditions Hermann.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2018. “Landmarks and Kwoma Identity.” In Sebastian Drude, Nicholas Ostler and Marielle Moser (Eds), Endangered Languages and the Land: Mapping Landscapes of Multilingualism. Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the Foundation for Endangered Languages (FEL), pp. 19-25. London: FEL & EL Publishing.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2017. “La multifonctionalité des conjonctions bó et bɔ̀ en fon.” Linguistique et langues africaines, Vol. 3, pp. 55-84.
Drapeau, Lynn and Renée Lambert-Brétière*. 2016. “Insubordination in Innu.” In Monica Macaulay, Margaret Noodin, and J. Randolph Valentine (Eds.), Papers of the Forty-fourth Algonquian Conference, pp. 197-210. New York: SUNY Press.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée and Claire Lefebvre. 2015. “Relabeling in Two Different Theories of the Lexicon.” In Claire Lefebvre, Relabeling in Language Genesis. Chapter 4, pp. 103-138. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lefebvre, Claire and Renée Lambert-Brétière. 2015. “Relabeling and Word Order: A Construction Grammar Perspective.” In Claire Lefebvre, Relabeling in Language Genesis. Chapter 5, pp. 139-163. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
CONFERENCES (Selection)
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2025. “Classificateurs verbaux en innu: classification ou incorporation nominale?” Société de Linguistique de Paris, École Normale Supérieure de Paris, January 25, 2025.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2024. “Verbal Morphology in the Early Grammar of Innu by Fr. Jean-Baptiste de La Brosse (1768).” Special session on Investigating the Indigenous Languages of the Americas: History and Prospects, 21st International Congress of Linguists, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, September 8-14, 2024.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2024. “Gender Roles and the Transitivity of Sex in Kwoma.” Workshop on the Grammar of Sex, Syntax of the World’s Languages IX, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, July 23-26, 2024.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée and Yvette Mollen. 2023. “Enjeux sociaux et politiques de la commémoration du patrimoine linguistique autochtone.” 90e congrès de l’ACFAS, La commémoration au cœur des patrimoines, University of Montreal, May 11-12, 2023.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2023. “Pronominal articles in Kwoma.” Current Trends in Papuan Linguistics, University of Paris-Sorbonne, February 15-17, 2023.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2020. The grammar of smelling in Fon.” 50th Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics (CALL), Department of African Languages and Cultures, Leiden University, Netherlands, August 31-September 2, 2020.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2019. “Task-based language revitalization of Kwoma, an endangered language of Papua New Guinea.” PRELA 2019: Professionals and Research in Applied Linguistics: methodological challenges, social implications and perspectives for action, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Lyon, June 24-26th, 2019.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée and Tania Lizarazo. 2019. “Digital Storytelling and Documentary Linguistics: Transforming Engaged Scholarship into Public Knowledge.” PRELA 2019: Professionals and Research in Applied Linguistics: methodological challenges, social implications and perspectives for action, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Lyon, June 24-26th, 2019.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2018. “Landmarks and Kwoma Identity.” FEL XXII – Endangered Languages and the Land, The University of Iceland, Reykjavík, August 25-27, 2018.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2017. “Why Write When No One Wants to Read? New Methods in the Revitalization of Kwoma,” Arizona Linguistics Circle 11, University of Arizona, October 21-22, 2017.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2017. “Comitative Constructions in Fon.” 48th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, University of Indiana, Bloomington, March 30-April 2, 2017.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2016. “Serial verb constructions in Caribbean Creoles.” Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics Conference, Washington DC, January 8-9, 2016.
Lambert-Brétière, Renée. 2015. “Language Competence in the Field, and the Challenges of Documenting the Kwoma Language (Papua New Guinea),” MLLI Faculty and Student Annual Research Day, UMBC, November 6, 2015.
Drapeau, Lynn and Renée Lambert-Brétière. 2015. “Non-standard transcription of Innu: an essential ingredient of its documentation.” The 4th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC), “Enriching Theory, Practice, & Application,” University of Hawaii, Honolulu, February 26-March 1, 2015.