2007 North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad
The Contest
The Prizes
There will be local and national prizes for best overall scores and best scores in individual problems. Prizes at the local level include a copy of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language for the first, second and third place contestants.Pending paperwork and insurance, a team of four students will be chosen to represent the US at the International Linguistics Olympiad in St. Petersburg on July 31st- August 4th, 2007. The website (now only in Russian, but soon to be in other languages) is:
http://www.olympics.spb.ru/
Registration
Deadline: March 28th, 2007
Registration and questions should be sent to the local hosts (see information below)
Download a flyer to put up at your school!
Boston Area Flyer Pittsburgh AreaIthaca Area Philadelphia Area
Students
Do you have a knack for languages? Do you like working with computers? Did you find grammar a really interesting topic in your English or foreign language classes? Then the Computational Linguistics Olympiad might be the right challenge for you!Talk with your teacher about having a trial contest at your school. We have sample problem sets and test booklets we can provide to your teacher and school.
Read about former Linguistics Olympiad participants!
Try your hand at a problem
Try this problem!Hierglyphics
The following are representations of two Egyptian "cartouches" from the Greco-Roman period. A cartouche is an oblong set of hieroglyphic characters that represents a name, a word or a phrase. One of these cartouches represents the name of the Queen "Cleopatra." Your task is to figure out which one means "Cleopatra," and what the other one probably means (Hint: the other cartouche is the name of another famous character from Ancient Egyptian history). This is exactly the kind of work that archeological linguists do when they attempt to interpret writings in ancient languages.
Be sure to explain your reasoning in detail. Good Luck!
(by Tom Payne, based on research by Jean-François Champollion
http://www.math.bas.bg/ml/iad/dremat/dmathen.html)
For the solution to this problem, click here
Olympiad Locations |
Organizing Committee |
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Pittsburgh area (hosted by Carnegie Mellon University) contact: Lori Levin, lsl  cs.cmu.edu
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Lori Levin (General Chair), Carnegie Mellon University |
| Philadelphia area (hosted by U. of Pennsylvania) contact: Mitch Marcus, mitch cis.upenn.edu
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Thomas Payne (General Chair), University of Oregon |
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Boston area (hosted by Brandies Univeristy, Cambridge) contact: James Pustejovsky, boston.olympiad gmail.com
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Dragomir R. Radev (Program Chair), University of Michigan |
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Ithaca area (hosted by Cornell University) contact: Claire Cardie, cardie cs.cornell.edu
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William Lewis (Outreach Chair), University of Washington |
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Online participation contact: Dragomir R. Radev, radev umich.edu
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James Pustejovsky (Sponsorship Chair), Brandeis University |
| Barbara Di Eugenio (Follow-up Chair), University of Illinois at Chicago | |
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| NAACL | |