Brentari received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Chicago in 1990.[1] Her dissertation, entitled Theoretical Foundations of American Sign Language Phonology, was supervised by John Goldsmith.
Brentari’s research interests address the sign language grammars of Deaf communities—how these languages emerge, and the degree of variation that exists among them. She has analyzed the formal, cognitive, and cultural dimensions that motivate the similarities and differences among these languages. Her work focuses on sign language structure as a way to better understand the flexibility of the human language capacity in constructing spoken and signed languages, as well as the effects of communication mode (or modality) on language. Brentari's scholarship focuses on the phonology, morphology, and prosody of sign languages.[6] Her current research has expanded to include analyses of a new protactile language.[7]