2015Q3 Reports: Linguistics Olympiads

Report by Lori Levin

The 2014 International Linguistics Olympiad was held in Beijing at the Beijing Language and Culture University. There were 152 contestants in 39 teams, representing 28 countries, who competed to solve problems on diverse languages includingBenabena <http://ioling.org/problems/2014/i1/>,Kiowa <http://ioling.org/problems/2014/i2/>,Tangut <http://ioling.org/problems/2014/i3/>,Engenni <http://ioling.org/problems/2014/i4/>,Gbaya <http://ioling.org/problems/2014/i5/>, andArmenian <http://ioling.org/problems/2014/t1/>. The winners can be viewed here: http://www.ioling.org/results/2014/. The problems can be viewed here: http://www.ioling.org/problems/2014/.

The 2015 International Linguistics Olympiad will be held in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria at the American University. At least 25 countries are participating. By the time of the ACL meeting, the results will be available at http://www.ioling.org.

NAACL financially supports the US and Canadian teams (NACLO), contributing $5K per year, which is used for travel expenses to IOL. This year NAACL also donated an exhibit table at the annual conference at no charge to NACLO.

Dragomir Radev, the chair of the ELCLO (English Language Computational Linguistics Olympiads) consortium, oversaw the screening, refining, and testing of problems for NACLO, UKLO (UK), AILO (Ireland), OzCLO (Australia), and New Zealand. Contact Drago for information about joining ELCLO.

Lori Levin, the co-chair of NACLO, has been bringing NACLO activities to the general public at science festivals such as the Philadelphia Science Festival. Contact Lori for ideas about public outreach activities.

Contact international-olympiad-in-linguistics@googlegroups.com to find out how to start an Olympiad in your country.