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

吸引和培养语言学新生对满足国家对语言和交流研究的需求至关重要。该奖项将为两支美国高中生团队提供旅行支持，以参加将于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。100多名世界上最聪明、最有动力的高中生将聚集在一起参加语言学奥林匹克竞赛。美国队各由四名学生组成，在2018年1月和3月举行的北美计算语言学奥林匹克竞赛（NACLO）中获得最佳成绩。国际语言学奥林匹克竞赛为学生提供语言学科学方法以及语言文件和分析的实践经验。与数学和科学奥林匹克竞赛不同，这些竞赛侧重于学生已经掌握的材料，语言学奥林匹克竞赛通过学生不熟悉的语言的逻辑谜题引入新材料。在解决一个难题的过程中，学生可以发现一些关于一种语言的语法或语音，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外，这项比赛还培养了元语言推理，这对计算机科学，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点的能力都至关重要。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，因此竞赛也鼓励学生清楚地提出假设并解释数据如何支持假设的能力。 在参加完卡内基梅隆大学的训练后，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获奖者的国际经验的顶峰，允许团队成员与分享他们的才能和兴趣的其他学生竞争和互动。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力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.