The North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad - NAMCLO 2007

[George Mitrevski]

The North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad

     NAMCLO 2007

http://www.namclo.org 


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

Foreign Languages                 tel. 334-844-6376
6030 Haley Center                  fax. 334-844-6378
Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849
home: www.auburn.edu/~mitrege


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