18.370, FYI: North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad

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LINGUIST List: Vol-18-370. Fri Feb 02 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 18.370, FYI: North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad

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1)
Date: 02-Feb-2007
From: Thomas Payne < tpayne at uoregon.edu >
Subject: North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2007 16:29:34
From: Thomas Payne < tpayne at uoregon.edu >
Subject: North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad 
 

On 29 March, 2007, an academic competition in linguistics for secondary school
students will be held in four US cities and the Internet. The program is called
the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (www.namclo.org). Students
throughout North America (defined as Canada, the USA and Mexico) are eligible to
compete for prizes and a chance to participate in the International Linguistics
Olympiad to be held in St. Petersburg, Russia, in August of 2007. 

The host cities for the 2007 pilot program will be Boston (Brandeis University),
Pittsburgh (Carnegie Mellon University), Philadelphia (University of
Pennsylvania) and Ithaca (Cornell University). The program has received funding
from the US National Science Foundation, the Linguistics Society of America and
several corporate sponsors.

The North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NAMCLO) is the direct
descendent of the Olympiad in Linguistics and Mathematics founded in 1965 in
Moscow, Russia. High school students compete by solving linguistics and logic
problems based on natural languages. This program is credited with introducing
thousands of Russian students to the field of linguistics, many of whom have
gone on to become prominent professional linguists. Although the term
''computational'' is employed in the title of the new program, you will find
that most of the problems are of the traditional type. This is not a competition
that deals with computer technology, but with all aspects of natural language
structure and function, including computational thinking as it relates to
natural language processing.

Over the years, many problems have been created for the Russian Olympiad,
various olympiads in other countries, and the International Linguistics
Olympiad. These can often be adapted for use in introductory (or even advanced!)
linguistics courses, and are being made available for use by professional
linguists. However, each year fresh problems are needed to stimulate new
generations of budding linguists. For that reason, we would like to ask you,
Linguistlist subscribers, to consider submitting a problem in a language you
know well. Guidelines for problem creation and a list of ideas for potential
problems are available from the organizers mentioned below.

Thank you very much for your help in raising the profile of our discipline among
secondary school students. Please contact any of the executive team members
below if you have any questions or would like to be involved in some way,
including possibly hosting a competition in your area next year and/or
submitting a problem for future competitions. 

Lori Levin - Co-chair. lsl at cs.cmu.edu
Thomas E. Payne - Co-chair. tpayne at uoregon.edu
Dragomir R. Radev - Program chair. radev at umich.edu 



Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics
                     General Linguistics





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