Second All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad

Update

The individual round will take place on Wednesday February 3rd in your own school. Those who get a sufficient mark in the individual round will be invited to take part in the final in Dublin. A tutor will be assigned to your school for training before the final. The final will take place on March 24th 2010 in DCU.

AILO 2010

Following the success of last year's inaugural AILO event, CNGL is pleased to announce AILO II, the Second All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad. We invite Transition-year, 5th- and 6th-year students in Ireland and Northern Ireland (= years 11-13)(see note at the bottom of this page) with an interest in languages and good analytical skills to put them together, learn about linguistics, and participate in this fun competition, with a view to representing Ireland in the International Linguistics Olympiad in Sweden. Some exceptional younger students may also be interested. Any student who enjoys the sample problems linked below is a potential contestant.

Background information

Secondary school students don't typically know what Linguistics is, so they probably don't know if they are interested in it until they try the problems. However, students who like languages, maths, computers, and solving logic problems are most likely to be interested in this competition.

What is a Linguistics Olympiad?

Many disciplines such as science, maths, creative writing, music, run competitions to find the most promising young students. Some take the form of projects or experiments, others involve composition or performance. A LINGUISTICS OLYMPIAD involves face-to-face competition where teams or individuals have to use their ingenuity, creativity and skill to solve language-related problems.

The idea of holding academic challenges in linguistics stems from a long tradition of linguistics and mathematics competitions, which began in Moscow in the 1960s, and spread to other Eastern European countries. Recently, western countries, notably the USA, have had similar competitions along the same lines. Since 2003, national winners have taken part in the International Linguistics Olympiads (ILOs) hosted mostly in Eastern European countries. Last year's ILO was in Wrocław, Poland and, for the first time, included a team represnting Ireland. The next ILO will take place in Stockholm, Sweden, in July 2010.

The Olympiad itself involves both individual and team competitions solving a series of logic and linguistics problems. No specialist linguistics knowledge is assumed, nor does knowledge of specific foreign languages help particularly. The individual contests involve solving four or five problems over a period of 2½ hours. The team competition, where four students work together, has more/harder problems.

How does it work?

CNGL will organise and host the second All Ireland competition, with a qualification round for individuals to be held in your own school in late January or early February, with selected students invited to a national final (individual and team competitions) to be held in March, in Dublin. The four best students will make up the team going forward to represent Ireland in the International Olympiad in Sweden, in July or August.

The first individual round will consist of four or five questions of varying difficulty, to be answered in a 2½-hour test. There is no limit on the number of participants from any individual school. Individuals who score above a threshold will be invited to participate in a second individual round, as well as a team round. For students that pass the qualifiers, CNGL will provide a training session in their own school by a doctoral student or university lecturer or professor, some time in February or March. It is up to the schools to organise further sessions on their own. Training involves trying out example problems and discussing how to solve them: there are no linguistics lectures as such.

The final of the Olympiad, to be held at DCU in Dublin in March, will consist of the second individual round, which will again involve five or six this time somewhat harder questions to be answered in a 2½-hour test, to take place in the morning. This will be followed in the afternoon, after a buffet lunch provided by the organizers, by the team competition. The team competition has a similar format, but this time students work together to find the solutions. Teams consist of four students accompanied by a trainer who, of course, does not help during the actual contest. The trainer will normally be a teacher from the students’ own school. We will consult with teachers to accommodate schools who do not have exactly the right numbers of students to make up teams for the team competition (for example, allowing extra students to make up the numbers, or suggesting composite teams with other schools). Last year, not all students chose to take part in both individual and team competititons.

The competition is designed for students in Transition year and 5th and 6th years, though some exceptional younger students may also be interested. Any student who enjoys the sample problems linked below is a potential contestant. No prior training in linguistics or foreign languages is assumed, but you mostly need logical thinking, as well as basic general knowledge. Because of CNGL's special focus on computational applications to language, some problems relate especially to Computational Linguistics. However, no special knowledge of computer science or programming is needed.

How much will it cost?

Short answer: Nothing, beyond the cost of bringing students to Dublin for the national final. All expenses for students chosen for the trip to Sweden for the ILO are covered.

What kinds of problems should be expected?

The range of problems is very varied. But in all cases, the information required for solving them is fully contained within the problem, and you do not need any specialized linguistic knowledge. For instance, translation problems involve a set of sentences or phrases in a foreign language and their translations in English, from which you have to figure out some of the vocabulary and grammar rules of the language, and use them to translate other sentences. Number problems have basic arithmetic statements expressed in a foreign language (such as "six times four is twenty-four") from which you have to figure out how to translate different numbers and expressions. Some languages use bases other than ten, others use different words for the same number depending on the objects being counted, etc. Quite popular are problems where you have to decipher another language's writing systems, or to work out some rules about the sounds of a language. More formal problems include analysing and describing a language phenomenon in a set of "rules" that a computer could follow. For example, a set of rules to convert an active sentence such as Mary ate an apple to its passive equivalent An apple was eaten by Mary.

Sample problems

Click here to download two problems for you to try. You may also find more example problems in the following archives:

 Two more sample problems
 NACLO practice problems
 Linguistics Challenge puzzles

You may find even more problems by searching the web for "International Linguistics Olympiad" or just "linguistics olympiad".

You can find some reading materials on the website of the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad; note that these readings are not required for participation - they are just for your interest.

Information Documents

You can download the AILO 2010 Brochure here.

You can download the Letter to Schools (Republic of Ireland) here.

You can download the Letter to Schools (Northern Ireland) here.

You can find our more information about CNGL here.

How to Apply

You can download the application form here.

If you are interested in taking part please send the application form / your details to Cara Greene before November 20th 2009.

Cara Greene
All Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO)
Centre for Next Generation Localisation (CNGL)
Dublin City University
Dublin 9

Tel: +353 1 700 6704
Email: cara.greene (AT) dcu.ie