BYU North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad 2012

The overall organization

NACLO is an abbreviation for the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad. It is a fun and educational contest for high school (and younger) students that has them solve linguistics problems drawn from a variety of languages (natural and artificial). Though no prior knowledge of particular languages or of linguistics is required, a good knowledge of logic, reasoning, and problem solving skills is helpful.

The first round of NACLO competition is held locally at various locations in the U.S. and Canada. Students who score well on the test advance to a second invitational round of competition.

The Computational Linguistics Olympiad is a worldwide movement which began in Moscow in the 1960's. The U.S. first entered the competition in 1998. Teams from many other places of the world, including a team of top-scoring students from NACLO, will compete for the worldwide championship (to be held in summer 2012).

Last year

In 2011 more than a thousand high school students from across the USA and Canada competed in the fifth annual North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad. The top 125 U.S. students (and the top 10 from Canada) advanced to the invitational round. The top twelve NACLO winners from the U.S. (and the top 4 from Canada) advanced to the International Olympiad of Linguistics, held in the U.S. for the first time. 27 teams representing 19 countries competed. The U.S. team won 6 individual medals (1 gold, 4 silver, and 1 bronze) and other awards. The test included problems about Faroese orthography, Menominee morphology, Vai syntax, and Nahuatl semantics. You can read more about their successes here.

Participate!

For the second year in a row, BYU will host a local session of the NACLO competition. If you're a high school student (or even a middle school student) you can participate in the competition here at BYU. To find out more, consult the "Local information" menu above. When you're ready to register, click on the button below.