International Linguistics Olympiad (ILO) 2018: Prague, CZ, July 26 - August 1, 2018

吸引和培养语言学专业的新学生对于满足国家在语言和交际研究方面的需求至关重要。该奖项将为参加将于2018年7月26日至30日在捷克共和国布拉格举行的第16届国际语言学奥林匹克竞赛的两支美国高中生队伍提供旅费支持。100多名世界上最聪明、最上进的高中生将齐聚一堂，参加语言学奥林匹克竞赛。美国团队每队由四名学生组成，他们是2018年1月和3月举行的北美计算语言学奥林匹克竞赛（NACLO）的冠军。国际语言学奥林匹克竞赛为学生提供了语言学科学方法的实践经验，以及语言的文献和分析。与数学和科学奥赛不同，语言学奥赛侧重于学生已经掌握的材料，而语言学奥赛则通过学生不熟悉的语言的逻辑谜题引入新材料。在解决谜题的过程中，学生可以发现一些关于一门语言的语法或声音，它的概念系统，它的相关文化，或它与其他语言的历史关系。除了培养对人类语言和文化多样性的洞察力之外，这项竞赛还培养了元语言推理，这对于计算机科学、语言技术以及任何涉及分析解决问题的技能和提出数据支持的逻辑论证的能力的职业都是必不可少的。由于语言学奥林匹克竞赛的传统是将一半的分数建立在对答案的书面解释上，竞赛也鼓励参赛者清晰地提出假设，并解释数据是如何支持这个假设的。在卡内基梅隆大学参加完训练课程后，美国队将前往布拉格与来自其他30个国家的球队进行比赛。IOL是NACLO获奖者的顶级国际经验，使团队成员能够与其他学生竞争并互动，分享他们的才能和兴趣。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Attracting and training new students in linguistics is essential to meeting the nation's needs for research in language and communication. This award will provide travel support for two teams of American high school students to participate in the 16th International Linguistics Olympiad, which will take place in Prague, Czech Republic, in July 26-30, 2018. More than 100 of the world's brightest and most motivated high school students will gather for the Linguistics Olympiad. The American teams, each comprised of four students, were top finishers in the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO), held in January and March, 2018. The International Linguistics Olympiad provides students with a hands-on experience of the scientific approach to linguistics and the documentation and analysis of language. Unlike math and science Olympiads, which focus on material that students have already mastered, linguistics Olympiads introduce new material through logic puzzles in languages unfamiliar to the students. In the course of solving a puzzle, the students can discover something about the grammar or sounds of a language, its conceptual system, its associated culture, or its historical relationship to other languages. In addition to fostering insight into human linguistic and cultural diversity, this competition fosters meta-linguistic reasoning that is essential for computer science, language technologies, and indeed any career involving analytical problem-solving skills and the ability to present a logical argument supported by data. Because it has been the tradition of linguistics Olympiads to base half of the score on the written explanation of the answer, the contests also encourage the ability to clearly present a hypothesis and explain how it is supported by the data. After attending a training session at Carnegie Mellon University, the US team will travel to Prague to compete with teams from 30 other countries. The IOL serves as a capstone international experience for the winners of NACLO, allowing the team members to compete and interact with other students who share their talents and interests.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.