Linguistic Olympics -- call for submissions

[Tom Payne]

The Linguistic Olympics is an entertaining and educational
activity for secondary school students (ages 11 to 18). The
students compete by solving linguistic problems in real
languages they have never learned. This activity has been a
regular part of educational life in Russia for over 30
years, and has now been implemented three times in Eugene,
Oregon, USA, as an outreach of the University of Oregon
Department of Linguistics.

I would like to announce that the US Linguistic Olympics
Website has been updated. The site has a new look, and there
are now over 25 problems geared to students who are native
speakers of English. These problems may be downloaded for
personal or classroom use. I would encourage all linguists
to look at the site and try some of the problems. Although
they are geared to secondary school students, many of them
are challenging even to professional linguists. You may find
some of these useful in your classes.

Another reason I would like to ask FunkNet members to look
at the site is that I would like you to consider submitting
a problem in a language you know well. Our Russian
colleagues have been most gracious in allowing us to adapt
problems from their archives. However, they are also
constantly in need of more problems for their on-going
Linguistic Olympics program. We would like to reciprocate by
offering them some original problems.

The Linguistic Olympics homepage is
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~tpayne/lingolym. There is also
an unlinked page that contains my report to the LSA on the
1998 US Linguistic Olympics. It is at
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~tpayne/lingolym/LOreport.htm.
This document also gives guidelines for problem preparation.

Thank you very much for your help in making our discipline
known among secondary school students.

Tom Payne
Department of Linguistics
University of Oregon