International Symposium on Language Science (ISLS) 2026 Concludes with Success

The Faculty of Humanities at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), in collaboration with the Department of English and Communication and the Department of Language Science and Technology, successfully organised the International Symposium on Language Science (ISLS) 2026: Interdisciplinary Research and the Legacy of Yuen Ren Chao on 8 and 9 May 2026. The Symposium attracted over 140 participants from 11 countries and regions, including Australia, Chinese Mainland, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Nigeria, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This remarkable international turnout is a testament to the Symposium's global significance and the universal appeal of language science. The event brought together an international community of scholars and researchers, featuring four distinguished keynote speakers (in alphabetical order of surname): Prof. Nai Ding (Zhejiang University), Prof. Roberto Filippi (UCL Institute of Education), Dr Tomoyasu Horikawa (NTT Communication Science Laboratories) and Prof. Judith F. Kroll (University of California, Irvine). The programme also included 14 parallel oral presentation sessions and a poster session, covering a wide range of topics in language science. In tribute to the legacy of Prof. Yuen Ren Chao, the Symposium presented two Chao Prize Lectures by the 2026 Laureates: Prof. Brian MacWhinney (Lifetime Achievement Award) and Prof. Charles B. Chang (Early Career Contribution Award). Learn more about Chao Prize. To further commemorate Prof. Yuen Ren Chao’s contributions and to continue the scholarly exchange initiated at the 2024 Symposium, the newly published volume Interdisciplinary Research in Language Science: Yuen Ren Chao’s Legacy was also officially launched at the Symposium. The Symposium successfully fostered interdisciplinary dialogue and advanced research in language science, while continuing to inspire future generations of linguists and language science researchers, carrying forward the enduring legacy of Prof. Yuen Ren Chao.

Prof. Zhu Xinhua Advances Multimodal Reading through Research and Knowledge Transfer

Prof. Zhu Xinhua, Professor in the Department of Language Science and Technology, was invited as an expert advisor for the multimodal reading activities in the 2026 National Reading Week – “Reading Across Horizons Shared Reading Session cum Joint Primary and Secondary School 30-minute Read” event organised by the Education Bureau (EDB) on 23 April 2026. The event engaged over 1,100 students and teachers onsite and 30,000 participants online across Hong Kong, and set a new world record related to Multimodal Reading Activity. Drawing on over six years of sustained research in online and multimodal reading, Prof. Zhu provided professional guidance on lesson design, pedagogical principles, and assessment considerations. His work bridges curriculum policy, classroom practice, and academic research, aligning closely with EDB’s renewed focus on multimodal reading and literacy. The initiative also exemplifies effective knowledge transfer, translating internationally recognised research (including multiple SSCI Q1 publications) into large scale educational practice. Prof. Zhu and his team have developed multimodal reading frameworks, assessment tools, and instructional strategies which have been piloted in many Hong Kong schools and disseminated through teacher professional development and public platforms. Click HERE for more information.

PolyU Presents Lifetime Achievement and Early Career Contribution Awards to Two Distinguished Scholars at 2026 Yuen Ren Chao Prize in Language Science

(11 May 2026) The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) proudly presented the 2026 Yuen Ren Chao Prize in Language Science at a presentation ceremony held on 8 May. Prof. Brian MACWHINNEY, Theresa Heinz Professor of Cognitive Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and Prof. Charles B. CHANG, Fellow of the Psychonomic Society were bestowed with the Lifetime Achievement Award and the Early Career Contribution Award respectively for their remarkable achievements in and outstanding contributions to the field of language science. Initiated and hosted by the PolyU Faculty of Humanities (FH), the Yuen Ren Chao Prize in Language Science (the Chao Prize) is awarded on a biennial basis. Named in honour of the late Prof. Yuen Ren Chao, widely regarded as the father of modern Chinese language studies, the Chao Prize commemorates Prof. Chao’s interdisciplinary legacy and recognises scholarly excellence that advances language research and education. Addressing the ceremony, Prof. Jin-Guang TENG, PolyU President, noted, “The Chao Prize is perfectly aligned with PolyU’s motto, ‘To learn and to apply, for the benefit of mankind.’ It reflects the University’s pursuit of excellence in education and research, as well as its commitment to making positive impacts on Hong Kong, the nation and the world. At a time when artificial intelligence is transforming how people communicate, learn and create knowledge, language science plays a foundational role in helping us understand how people acquire and use language. The University recently established the Division of Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities under FH, reflecting our strong commitment to harnessing technology to enrich its humanity disciplines.” This year, the Chao Prize is generously sponsored by PolyU Technology and Consultancy Company Limited (PTeC). Representing the patron, Prof. Christopher CHAO, PolyU Senior Vice President (Research and Innovation), stated, “The Prize reflects PolyU’s strong commitment to research that is both scientifically rigorous and socially relevant. By translating academic excellence into practice, PTeC aims to create value beyond the University and make a lasting difference to industry and society.” Prof. HU Guangwei, Interim Dean of FH, highlighted the broader academic vision underpinning the Chao Prize and said, “This occasion is not only a celebration of the work of two outstanding scholars, but also a reflection of PolyU’s shared belief that humanistic knowledge is essential to innovation in an age increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence.” The two 2026 Yuen Ren Chao Prize in Language Science laureates are both internationally renowned scholars who have made significant contributions with far-reaching impact on language science research worldwide. Prof. Brian MacWhinney has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for this year’s Chao Prize. Prof. Brian MacWhinney has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for his lifetime of distinguished contributions to language science, encompassing integrative theoretical innovation, research infrastructure development and lasting international impact on the study of human language. At the forefront of language science research for over five decades, he pushes forward research addressing the complexity of human language by integrating experimental methods, large-scale data resources and theoretically motivated computational approaches. He is also the founding Director of the Child Language Data Exchange System and TalkBank, the world’s largest open-access integrated repository for spoken-language data. Prof. Charles B. Chang has been awarded the Early Career Contribution Award for this year’s Chao Prize. Prof. Charles B. Chang has been awarded the Early Career Contribution Award in recognition of his outstanding early career contributions to the study of bilingual speech and language development, as well as his demonstrated leadership and international impact in advancing language science. Through meticulous experimental phonetic analyses, he has demonstrated that a speaker’s first language can change under the influence of a second language within a relatively short period of time, leading a breakthrough in language science at the international level. His research continues to investigate factors that drive language change when multiple languages interact in the bilingual and multilingual mind, advancing understanding of cross‑linguistic influence, heritage language speech and the dynamic nature of multilingual sound systems. For biographies of the two laureates, please visit the website of the Yuen Ren Chao Prize in Language Science.

Prof. Sun Xin Receives the PolyU Young Innovative Researcher Award (YIRA) 2026

Prof. Sun Xin, Assistant Professor in the Department of Language Science and Technology, has won the PolyU Young Innovative Researcher Award (YIRA) 2026. The YIRA is a prestigious university-level award that honours young faculty members who have demonstrated originality, contributed to technological advancement, and propelled transformational innovation into solutions addressing global challenges through their research. Prof. Sun is one of the six awardees among the 60 submissions across all schools and faculties. Her winning research project is titled “Brain Basis of Dyslexia in Chinese-English Bilinguals: Phonological and Morphological Assessments Using Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy.” It introduces a novel, evidence-based neuroimaging approach using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to probe two underlying oral difficulties that are precursors to and associated with dyslexia, phonological and morphological processing. The objective is to characterise the neurocognitive profiles of Chinese-English bilingual children with dyslexia. In the long term, these neurobiological insights have the potential to assist early identification strategies and support the development of targeted interventions for bilingual paediatric populations in Hong Kong and globally.

Prof. Sun Xin Wins Early Career Research Excellence Award at ARWA 2026

Prof. Sun Xin, Assistant Professor in the Department of Language Science and Technology, won the Early Career Research Excellence Award in the 10th Annual Conference for the Association for Reading and Writing in Asia (ARWA 2026). This award aims to recognise a talented early-career researcher who shows outstanding research potential in an area of reading and writing research that is related to Asia. The ARWA, registered as a society in 2016, is for researchers studying literacy development, literacy impairment, or expert linguistic processing via print in Asia.

2026 Yuen Ren Chao Prize in Language Science Announced

The Faculty of Humanities of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) is pleased to announce the laureates of the 2026 Yuen Ren Chao Prize in Language Science. Initiated and hosted by the Faculty, the Prize is awarded on a biennial basis and was first conferred in 2024. It recognises distinguished contributions to language science research. The Lifetime Achievement Award is awarded to Professor Brian MacWhinney in recognition of his pioneering and sustained contributions to the field through integrative research spanning psycholinguistics, corpus and computational linguistics, neurolinguistics, and systems theory. The Early Career Contribution Award is conferred upon Professor Charles B. Chang for his influential research on bilingual speech, linguistics, phonetics, and language development. Together, the 2026 laureates have made significant contributions with far-reaching impact on language science research worldwide. Professor Brian MacWhinney is Theresa Heinz Professor of Cognitive Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the founding Director of the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) and TalkBank, the world’s largest open-access integrated repository for spoken-language data. These infrastructures have been used in more than 14,000 published papers. He is the first recipient of the Roger Brown Award from the International Association for the Study of Child Language and a recipient of the FABBS Honor Award for his contributions to the behavioural and brain sciences. For over five decades, Professor MacWhinney has been at the forefront of language science research. His research addresses the complexity of human language by integrating experimental methods, large-scale data resources, and theoretically motivated computational approaches. He is best known for the Competition Model, a highly influential theoretical framework which characterises language processing as cue-based competition between lexical, phonological, and syntactic representations. Supported by more than one hundred empirical studies across 18 languages, the Competition Model has fundamentally shaped research on first and second language acquisition, bilingualism, and language impairments. In parallel, his leadership in creating and sustaining TalkBank—including CHILDES, AphasiaBank, DementiaBank, PhonBank, and related resources—has transformed the empirical foundations of language science by establishing global standards for data sharing, annotation, and open science in language science. These resources have supported research across domains and continue to expand, with growing coverage of East Asian languages, including Chinese. Professor MacWhinney has also played a pioneering role in developing experimental and computational tools for language research, including PsyScope, E‑Prime, and more recently Batchalign, which enables automatic speech recognition and morphosyntactic analysis of spoken language data. His broader theoretical work on Emergentism integrates insights from systems theory, cognition, and neural plasticity to explain how language structure arises through interacting mechanisms operating over multiple timescales. Through sustained scholarly leadership, mentorship, and service to international research communities, Professor MacWhinney has made enduring contributions to both theoretical inquiry and research infrastructure in contemporary language science. Professor MacWhinney receives the Yuen Ren Chao Prize in Language Science for his lifetime of distinguished contributions to language science, encompassing integrative theoretical innovation, research infrastructure development, and lasting international impact on the study of human language. Professor Charles B. Chang is Professor of Linguistics whose research focuses on phonetics, phonology, and language acquisition, with particular emphasis on bilingualism and multilingualism. He is a recipient of the Early Career Award from the Linguistic Society of America and has been elected a Fellow of the Psychonomic Society. Professor Chang’s principal contribution to language science lies in his pioneering research on bilingual speech. Through meticulous experimental phonetic analyses, he has demonstrated that a speaker’s first language can change under the influence of a second language within a relatively short period of time. This work shows the malleability of the first language as a consequence of bilingualism and directly challenges long‑standing assumptions that the native language is biologically ‘anchored’ after childhood or adolescence. His research has contributed greatly to a breakthrough in language science at the international level by facilitating a paradigm shift in how the first language is understood—not as a fixed end‑product, but as a dynamic process that continues to evolve across the lifespan. Building on this foundational insight, Professor Chang continues to investigate the factors that drive language change when multiple languages interact in the bilingual and multilingual mind. His research has advanced understanding of cross‑linguistic influence, heritage language speech, and the dynamic nature of multilingual sound systems, and has helped reshape theoretical and empirical approaches to language development, attrition, and change. In addition to his research achievements, Professor Chang plays an active leadership role in the field and has contributed extensively through editorial service, leadership roles in major international conferences, and the mentorship of graduate students and junior researchers. Professor Chang receives the Yuen Ren Chao Prize in Language Science for his outstanding early‑career contributions to the study of bilingual speech and language development, and for his demonstrated leadership and international impact in advancing language science. The laureates will each deliver a public lecture on 8 May 2026. Interested parties are invited to join the lectures through the registration links below. Participants of 2026 International Symposium of Language Science (ISLS) need not register again. Click here to register for Prof. Brian MacWhinney’s lecture Click here to register for Prof. Charles B. Chang’s lecture The 2026 Yuen Ren Chao Prize in Language Science is generously supported and sponsored by PolyU Technology and Consultancy Company Limited, for which the Faculty of Humanities expresses its deepest gratitude. PolyU Technology and Consultancy Company Limited is committed to advancing excellence in academic-based consultancy services, a vision that aligns closely with the Yuen Ren Chao Prize’s mission to promote academic research for the benefit of humanity. The Faculty of Humanities extends its warmest congratulations to Professor Brian MacWhinney and Professor Charles B. Chang, and will continue to promote research in language science. For details of the Yuen Ren Chao Prize, please visit the website: https://www.polyu.edu.hk/fh/chao-prize.

Associate Dean Prof. Hang Xing Participates in UK–HK Higher Education Arts & Culture Network Workshop in London

Associate Dean Prof. Hang Xing participated in the UK–HK Higher Education (HE) Arts & Culture Network Workshop, organised by the British Council Hong Kong in London on 26–27 February. The workshop brought together 26 delegates from universities and cultural institutions across both regions for meaningful exchange and collaboration. Participants engaged in a series of thematic discussions exploring interdisciplinary collaboration, innovation and technology, intellectual property development, and sustainable partnership models. Facilitated discussions enabled delegates to share institutional priorities, exchange expertise, and identify areas for long-term cooperation. The workshop marks the beginning of the UK–HK HE Arts and Culture Network, a platform designed to support meaningful, innovative, and sustainable partnerships between the two regions. The Network also aims to empower emerging talent by fostering intergenerational dialogue and mentorship that will shape the future of arts and culture.

PolyU Linguistics Climbs to 45th in QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026

The Faculty has achieved a notable advancement in the 2026 QS World University Rankings by Subject. Linguistics at PolyU was ranked 45th globally in 2026, up from 51st in 2025, reflecting the strength and impact of the Faculty’s research and education in the field. In addition, the broad subject area of Arts and Humanities has also moved up in the latest rankings, reaching 72nd place worldwide this year and indicating ongoing progress across the humanities. The QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 evaluated the performance of over 1,900 institutions worldwide across 55 academic subjects and five broad subject areas, based on their academic reputation, employer reputation, citations per paper, the H-index and international research network.

Assistant Dean Prof. Renia Lopez on Learning by Doing in a GenAI-enabled World

Is GenAI changing the way we learn? While GenAI is now a non-negotiable in the classroom, student creativity and critical thinking remain the heart of education. Assistant Dean of the Faculty, Prof. Renia Lopez, shares her perspectives in Times Higher Education on redefining ‘learning by doing’ for a digital-first world. Click HERE to read more.

From HKLO to APLO: 20 Local Secondary School Students Advance to APLO

The 8th Hong Kong Linguistics Olympiad (HKLO) was held successfully on 8 February 2026, attracting a total of 105 contestants from 30 local secondary schools. The Linguistics Olympiad challenges contestants’ logical ability through linguistics puzzles, without requiring any knowledge of linguistics or foreign languages, with an aim to cultivate an understanding of the diversity of world languages and the ability to analyse their structures. This year, the questions explored the logic of a variety of languages, including Shanghainese, Guaraní, Maltese and Chiquitano. Two students won Gold Medals, six earned Silver Medals, twelve received Bronze Medals, and 23 were awarded Honourable Mentions. Among them, the top 20 contestants are qualified to compete in the upcoming Asia Pacific Linguistics Olympiad (APLO), scheduled for 29 March 2026. Congratulations to all our young linguistic talents on their remarkable achievement, and we wish them every success in the upcoming APLO!