The International Linguistics Olympiad: Preparing High School Students for the Study of Human Language and Computation

2011年7月，100多名世界上最聪明、最积极的高中生将齐聚匹兹堡，参加第九届国际语言学奥林匹克大赛。与数学和科学奥林匹克不同，数学和科学奥林匹克侧重于学生已经掌握的材料，而语言学奥林匹克通过学生不熟悉的语言的逻辑谜题引入新材料。在解谜的过程中，学生可以发现一种语言的语法或语音，它的概念系统，它的文化，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外，这项比赛还培养元语言推理，这对计算机科学、语言技术乃至任何涉及分析问题解决技能和提出数据支持的逻辑论点的职业都是必不可少的。因为语言学奥林匹克竞赛的传统是为答案的书面解释分配一半的分数，所以比赛也鼓励人们清楚地提出假设并解释它是如何得到数据支持的能力。更多信息和过去的竞赛谜题可以在http://www.ioling.org和http://www.naclo.cs.cmu.edu.上找到

More than 100 of the world's brightest and most motivated high school students will gather in Pittsburgh in July 2011 for the 9th International Linguistics Olympiad. Unlike math and science Olympiads, which focus on material 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 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 assign half of the score for 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.More information and past contest puzzles can be found at: http://www.ioling.org and http://www.naclo.cs.cmu.edu.