NACLO 2012 — The Ohio State University

What is NACLO?

Are you a high school student with a knack for languages, logic and computational thinking? Would you like to try your hand at deciphering an ancient script or deducing the logical patterns of Swahili or Hawaiian?

NACLO stands for the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad. It is a contest for high-school (and younger) students to solve linguistics problems drawn from a variety of languages. Only logic and reasoning skills are necessary; no prior knowledge of particular languages or of linguistics is required.

This year the Ohio State University will be a local site. The open round of the contest will take place on Thursday, February 2, 2012. Well-performing students will be invited to a second round to be held on March 13. The top students in the invitational round will have a chance to participate in the International Linguistics Olympiad in Slovenia in the summer. More information about NACLO can be found at the national NACLO site.

Information Session

There will be an information session with some time to try out practice problems on Tuesday, January 10, from 7:30 to 9:00 p.m. The session will be held in Jennings Hall (1735 Neil Ave, Columbus, OH 43210) Room 40. Please email us at if you plan to attend the session.

Registration

Participation is free. Students who are interested in can register at the NACLO registration site. Register early to be assured of a seat. Registrations will still be accepted, provided that space is available, up until Wednesday, February 1.

Where is the OSU site for the contest?

The location of the OSU site for the contest is the Ohio Union (1739 N High St, Columbus, OH 43210) in the Senate Chamber (Room 2145) on the second floor.

When should I arrive?

The contest starts at 10 a.m. sharp and goes until 1 p.m. on Thursday, February 2. Please arrive early, at about 9:30 a.m., as we will go over the rules prior to the start of the contest. After the contest, there will be refreshments and a discussion of opportunities for studying linguistics and computational linguistics at Ohio State.

Sample question

Abma is an Austronesian language spoken in parts of the South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu by around 8,000 people. Carefully study these Abma sentences, then answer the following questions. Note that there is no separate word for the or he in these Abma sentences.

Mwamni sileng. (He drinks water.)
Nutsu mwatbo mwamni sileng. (The child keeps drinking water.)
Mwerava Mabontare mwisib. (He pulls Mabontare down.)
Mabontare mwisib. (Mabontare goes down.)
Mweselkani tela mwesak. (He carries the axe up.)
Mwelebte sileng mwabma. (He brings water.)
Mabontare mworob mwesak. (Mabontare runs up.)
Sileng mworob. (The water runs.)
sesesrakan (teacher)

Use the above information to translate the following sentence:

The teacher carries the water down.

If you came up with Sesesrakan mweselkani sileng mwisib, this is the competition for you!

More sample questions for practice are available here.

Local organizers

Please contact us if you have questions at:

Ohio State's hosting activities are sponsored by the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, the Student Linguistic Association and the OSU chapter of the Association of Computing Machinery Committee on Women.

NACLO 2012 — North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad