Charles B. Chang is an associate professor in the linguistics department at Boston University,[1] where he is also affiliated with the Center for the Study of Asia,[2] the Center for Innovation in Social Science,[3] and the Hearing Research Center.[4] Chang is an Associate Editor of the journal Second Language Research[5] and a Life Member of the Linguistic Society of America.[6]
Charles B. Chang | |
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Alma mater | Harvard University University of Cambridge University of California, Berkeley |
Known for | Phonetic drift (linguistics) Advantageous language transfer |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Linguistics Phonetics Phonology Language acquisition Second-language acquisition Language attrition |
Institutions | University of Maryland, College Park Rice University SOAS University of London Boston University |
Selected as a Coca-Cola Scholar and a U.S. Presidential Scholar from New York in 1999,[7][8] Chang completed his undergraduate education at Harvard University, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 2003.[9] He received an MPhil in English and applied linguistics from the University of Cambridge in 2006 and a PhD in linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2010, writing a dissertation entitled "First language phonetic drift during second language acquisition."[10]
Chang is the recipient of several grants, fellowships, and awards including a Fulbright Program Fellowship, a Gates Cambridge Scholarship,[11] and grants from the National Science Foundation[12][13][14][15] and the National Institutes of Health.[16][17] In 2016, he was awarded the Peter Paul Career Development Professorship at Boston University.[18] In 2019, he was invited to the Distinguished Professors' Lectures Series at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (Poland).[19] In 2022, he was honored with the Early Career Award by the Linguistic Society of America "for contributions to the understanding of bilingual sound systems and cross-linguistic interactions, phonetic drift, and language learning over the lifespan, and to fostering diversity and inclusion within linguistics"[20] and was named a Fellow of the Psychonomic Society.[21] In 2023, he was awarded the inaugural Anne Cutler International Visiting Fellowship by Western Sydney University as well as a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.[22]
Prior to his appointment at Boston University, Chang taught at the University of Maryland, College Park, Rice University, and SOAS University of London. His research is in the areas of phonetics, phonology, language acquisition, and language attrition, with a focus on second-language acquisition and multilingualism in adulthood and heritage language speakers and learners.[23][24] He is known for discovering changes to the native language sound system occurring at the beginning of second-language acquisition and, more generally, native language phonetic modifications due to recent second-language experience, which he termed phonetic drift.[25][26][27][28][29] He is also known for documenting a "native-language transfer benefit" in second-language speech perception whereby non-native (bilingual) listeners outperform native listeners due to the influence of advantageous experience from their other language.[30][31]