Linguistics Competition for Teens – NACLO at W&M – January 29 2015
NACLO 2015 at William & Mary
North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad
Thursday, January 29, 2015
10 AM – 1 PM
What is it?
A fun and challenging problem-solving competition for middle school and high school students! Problems include linguistic puzzles like code breaking, translation, and predicting patterns. No experience or prior knowledge of linguistics is required! NACLO is a great way for students to learn about the diversity and patterns in languages around the world.
Students that excel in the Open Round on January 29th have the opportunity to be invited to the Invitational Round on March 12th, 2015. The competition is given in the form of a written test in which students are asked to solve a number of linguistic puzzles.
How do I register?
Registration for the competition is free and can be completed online at http://nacloweb.org/register_student.php. Online registration closes January 15th, 2015 but you can also register in person the day of the event by 9:45am.
What is linguistics?
Linguistics is the study of language, as a construct of the human mind/brain and as a social institution. Topics in linguistics range from the formation of speech sounds and the structures of languages to the study of how language is learned and how speech can convey traits of various cultures. Computational linguists study an expanding number of topics in language comprehension and production, including: machine translation, language learning by computers, large corpora of linguistic data, speech recognition, and speech synthesis.
Linguistics at William & Mary
The Linguistics Program at the College gives students the opportunity to study language from a variety of perspectives, with research in topics as varied as phonology to culture. The Linguistics program has about 70 majors; many of them connect their passion for language with a study in in other fields such as psychology, modern languages such as Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and English. Linguistics majors at the College have gone on to continue their education in graduate programs, while others have pursued speech pathology, joined the Peace Corps, and sought employment in government and private agencies such as Rosetta Stone.
Optional Practice Session
W&M students and faculty will be hosting an optional practice session for interested students on Wednesday, November 12th from 7:00-8:30PM in Morton Hall Rm. 220. We will be reviewing problems from previous years in preparation for this year’s competition!
For more information, practice problems, and registration, visit the NACLO website at www.nacloweb.org
Gelda’s House of Gelbelgarg
A frequent problem in computational linguistics is that passages often use words that the computer simply doesn’t have in its dictionary. Online slang evolves very fast, people use foreign words in English passages, people make typos and invent new abbreviations, etc. You could add new words to the dictionary as fast as you can find them and the next day the program could still be stumped by a new one! But the program doesn’t have to give up – instead, it can try to work out as much as it can. Various clues can tell a program whether something is a noun or a verb, a person or an inanimate object, etc., and you can even work out more! The following is a webpage where customers have rated their most recent experience at Gelda’s House of Gelbelgarg. Even if you’ve never heard of any of these dishes, you can still figure out some things about them…
TASK. Based on the following reviews, attempt to categorize the following items into I, L, or C. You won’t be able to categorize them with 100% certainty, but use the category that you think is most probable for each. Choose a single category for each word below.
| I: Individual, discrete food items | L: Liquids, undifferentiated masses, or masses of uncountably small things | C: Containers or measurements | |
| färsel-försel | |||
| gelbelgarg | |||
| gorse-weebel | |||
| rolse | |||
| flebba | |||
| göngerplose | |||
| meembel | |||
| sweet-bolger |
REVIEWS
#1 I took my nana here and she said it was just like she remembered from the old country; but the service was a bit lacking – nana ordered four gelbelgarg and the waitress only brought two!
#2 I found the food confusing and disorienting. Where is this from! I randomly ordered the färsel-försel and had to send them back! Three words: weird, weird, and weird!
#3 I went to Wolserl our last year for a holiday and this is the real thing. If you order the gelbelgarg, though, make sure you also get at least one rolse of sweet-bolger – it’s how the locals like it!
#4 Not a great date spot! I got a gelbelgarg and a rolse of meembel but my date was so disoriented that she just ended up with some gorse-weebel.
#5 The food was pretty good but I would have liked more gorse-weebel and fewer göngerplose. You really feel like the chef is skimping on the good stuff!
#6 A hidden gem in Lower Uptown! Get the färsel-försel with gorse-weebel. You’ll have a happy stomach for a week. And top it off with a flebba of sweet-bolger while you’re at it!
#7 The portions at this place are are just too big! I’d rather have half the portions at a lower price. They just bring out too many göngerplose and too much meembel for me
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