About the Competition

This olympiad is a contest in which high-school students solve linguistic puzzles. In solving the problems, students learn about the diversity and consistency of language, while exercising logic skills. No prior knowledge of linguistics or second languages is necessary. Professionals in linguistics, computational linguistics and language technologies use dozens of languages to create engaging problems that represent cutting edge issues in their fields. The competition has attracted top students to study and work in those same fields. It is truly an opportunity for young people to experience a taste of natural-language processing in the 21st century.

Event Date (Open Round)

Thursday, January 23, 2020
9:00 am - 12:00 pm

The competition starts promptly at 8:45 am, and will end at 12:00 pm. Please plan to arrive 30 minutes early (i.e., around 8:15 am), to allow for the time needed to find the room and sign in.

Location

The competition will take place at the University of North Texas Discovery Park, in rooms F204 (Laboratory for Recreational Computing) and F205 (Human Intelligence and Language Technologies Lab).

Details

Further details about the competition, including the contest rules and practice problems, are available from the central NACLO site. Top scorers in the open round of the competition will be eligible to compete in the invitational round on Thursday, March 5, 2020. Winners of the invitational round will be eligible to compete in the International Linguistics Olympiad. More information is available in the handbook for this event.

Notes

You should bring black ink pens and pencils. You will have to write the solutions in black ink, and may use pencils only for scratch work. Blank paper can be used for scratch work; however, the final solutions should be copied into the spaces provided in the problem booklet. You may not use any electronic devices except basic wristwatches. In particular, you may not use calculators, computers, palm pilots, cell phones, pagers, or wristwatches with built-in calculators. The NACLO handbook includes more information about the event.

Participants

Participation is invited from all high-school students in the area.

E-mail: UNT-HiLT-info@googlegroups.com