North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO) 2020

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Linguistics is the science of language. Linguists conduct formal studies of the structure of the world’s over 6,000 languages, investigate the acquisition and use of language in typical and atypical populations, seek to understand the neural structures that enable humans to learn and use language, and create the language models used in computational contexts, such as artificial intelligence and machine translation. The breadth of the field’s applications makes it vital to technological and medical advancements, economic competitiveness in a global economy, humanitarian aid, and U.S. national security. Given the multi-faceted importance of the field for the country, it is crucial to devote resources to the introduction of this field to high school students, and to recruit the brightest minds in the country to pursue careers in linguistics.This project supports the North American Computational Linguistics Open competition (NACLO) in its mission to introduce linguistics to high school students, to provide training to interested students and support to their teachers, to select and coach the team of U.S. students that represent the country at the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL), and to support the current work of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) focused on creating and promoting the teaching of an Advanced Placement course in linguistics for high school students. Specifically, the grant supports the costs associated with training a team of eight high school linguists from across the United States and escorting them to the 2020 IOL. Since 2007, about twenty-five percent of US team members who attend IOL have continuing involvement with the fields of linguistics and language technologies. Nearly all team members take linguistics courses in college, bringing a broadened view of language to their studies and future careers.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.