Willem Leo Marie (Leo) Wetzels (born 9 September 1951, Schinnen[1]) is a full professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Directeur de recherche at Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie (LPP), CNRS/Sorbonne-Nouvelle in Paris.
Wetzels has received numerous research grants, most recently a VU University research grant for an AIO-project on Aymara Morphophonology and the NWO internationalization grant which aims at constructing an international cooperation network in the area of Amerindian languages and cultures involving the chair of Amazonian Languages at the VU, the Centre d'Etudes des Langues Indigènes d'Amérique, CNRS, Paris, the Leiden Centre for Amerindian Studies, the Anthropology department of the Universidade Federal do Amazonas, Manaus, Brazil, and the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (National Institute for Amazonian Studies), Manaus, Brazil.
The project aims at establishing the phonological and morphological parameters that are crosslinguistically involved in long-distance nasal spreading.
As part of the project, a digital database (NASDAT) was developed by Rob Goedemans (Leiden University) George N. Clements (CNRS, Paris), and Leo Wetzels himself.
In another of his projects, Leo Wetzels and Sérgio Meira (Leiden University) present a comprehensive survey and theoretical discussion of the word-prosodic systems of the indigenous languages of South America.
’The Historical Phonology of Intrusive Stops: a Non-Linear Approach,’ Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 30,3: 285–333.
‘Niet-lineaire Fonologie, een theorie in SPE’, Inleiding, Leo Wetzels en Haike Jacobs (eds.
(with Engin Sezer).’Derived Opacity in Yakut Vowel Harmony', Leo Wetzels and Haike Jacobs (eds.)
A Formal Account of an Integrated Sound Change’, H.van der Hulst and Norval Smith (eds.)
‘Umlaut en Verkleinwoordsvorming in het Limburgs’, Gramma, Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Taalkunde:139-168.
‘Harmonia Vocálica, Truncamento, Abaixamento e Neutralização no Sistema Verbal do Português: Uma Análise Autosegmental', Cadernos de Estudos Lingüísticos.
‘Sobre a Duração dos Segmentos Vocálicos Nasais e Nasalizados em Português.
), Fonologia do Português, Numero Especial dos Cadernos de Estudos Lingüísticos.
‘Prevowels in Maxacalí: Where they come from,’ Revista da Associação Brasileira de Lingüística, São Paulo: 39–63.
‘Bakairi and the Feature ‘voice’,’ Revista da Associação Brasileira de Lingüística.
‘O Balanço entre Dados e Teoria nos Estudos de Variação e Mudança Lingüísticas’.
‘Comentários sobre a estrutura fonológica dos ditongos nasais no Português do Brasil’.
(Leo Wetzels first author, with Joan Mascaró) ‘The Typology of Voicing and Devoicing’ Language 77, 2: 207–244.
O testemunho das línguas indígenas brasileiras Yathé e Bakairi.’ Leitura, Revista do programa de pós-graduação em letras e linguística LCV-CHLA-UFAL: 13–29.
‘Sound Change and Analogy: The Synchronic Reflexes of the Second Compensatory Lengthening in Ancient Greek Dialects’.
Journal of Portuguese Linguistics Vol 5/6, Special Issue on the Prosody of the Iberian Languages: 9-58.