Charles Yang

Charles Yang is a Professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Linguistics, with joint appointments in Computer and Information Science and Psychology. As Chair of Linguistics and Director of the Program in Cognitive Science since 2011, he co-directs the Integrated Language Science and Technology group with John Trueswell.

• PhD in Computer Science, MIT AI Lab
• Faculty at Yale (2000-2008)
• Current roles: Chair of Linguistics, Director of Cognitive Science Program

His research bridges linguistics, cognitive science, and computational modeling, focusing on human and machine language acquisition, phonological and morphological learning, and computational modeling of historical language change. He develops the Tolerance Principle for quantifying language acquisition thresholds and investigates neural language models as cognitive theories.

Recent publications analyze language acquisition through computational models (2021-2024), with the 2025 work evaluating LLMs for low-resource languages. His 2016 book The Price of Linguistic Productivity won the Leonard Bloomfield Award and explores productivity in language systems.

• Guggenheim Fellowship (2018)
• Bloomfield Book Award (2018)
• NSF GRFP Fellowship
• Leonard Bloomfield Book Award (2016)

Yang advises students in language acquisition, computational linguistics, and cognitive modeling. His lab collaborates with researchers like Bob Berwick, Johan Bolhuis, and Noam Chomsky on integrated approaches to language science.