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The UK Linguistics Olympiad Some facts and figures

The UK Linguistics Olympiad Some facts and figures. Dick Hudson LAGB September 2011. International History. 1965: First Linguistics Olympiad in Moscow, run by Uspensky, Kibrik, Polivanova, Zalizniak, and Zhurinsky. 2003: First International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL), in Bulgaria .

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The UK Linguistics Olympiad Some facts and figures

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  1. The UK Linguistics OlympiadSome facts and figures Dick Hudson LAGB September 2011

  2. International History • 1965: First Linguistics Olympiad in Moscow, run by Uspensky, Kibrik, Polivanova, Zalizniak, and Zhurinsky. • 2003: First International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL), in Bulgaria. • 2009: USA launched the English Language Computational Linguistics Olympiad, a consortium of English-speaking countries which share test material. • 2011: Ninth IOL in Pittsburgh, USA, with 102 contestants representing 19 countries. • Website: www.ioling.org/

  3. UK History • 2009: Two UK schools competed as guests of the All-Irish olympiad (AILO), and one team represented the UK at the IOL. • 2010: UKLO founded as a sub-committee of the Committee for Linguistics in Education. • Since 2009, the UK has won • 3 bronze medals • 1 best-solution prize (Nathan Somers) • 3 honorable mentions at the IOL. • 2013: the UK will host the IOL

  4. UK infrastructure • UKLO committee: • 10 linguists • 3 school teachers • A team of volunteer markers (http://bit.ly/uklo_markers) • A team of problem builders (bit.ly/uklo_problemsetters) • 13 sponsoring organisations • A patron (Christine Ohuruogu, MBE)

  5. UK organisation • Early February: Round 1 • taken in schools • three levels of difficulty: Foundation, Intermediate, Advanced • Advanced papers are marked centrally, the others by the school • Late March: Round 2 • residential, in a University(2012: York, 2013: ?) • three resident tutors

  6. UK take-up

  7. Age distribution (2011) Compare the Maths Challenge: 600,000 per year!

  8. A sample problem: Japaneasy • By Harold Somers • Japanese is written using a variety of scripts including Chinese characters. But for the purposes of learning to read, and in the case of unusual words, it is quite common to use a phonetic system, hiragana. Shown below on the left are eight examples of simple Japanese words, with their pronunciation in a random order on the right. English meanings are also given but for information only – they play no part in solving this problem. • Q1. (4 marks) Use the table in the answer sheet to show how the words on the left correspond to the pronunciations on the right. 

  9. The data

  10. More questions Q2. (3 marks) How would you pronounce the following Japanese words? (a) おでき ‘eruption’ (b) だん‘group’ Q3.(3 marks) How would you write the following words in hiragana? (a) satsu ‘banknote’ (b) kanten ‘point of view’

  11. Volunteers needed • for marking (5/10 hours in February) • for building problems • ?? for training teachers ?? My email address: dick@ling.ucl.ac.uk

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