The International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) is а student competition for secondary school students from the International Science Olympiads. Its abbreviation, IOL, is deliberately chosen not to correspond to the name of the organization in any particular language so that member organizations can choose for themselves how to designate the competition in their own language. This olympiad furthers the fields of mathematical, theoretical, and descriptive linguistics.
Format The setup differs from most other Science Olympiads in that the olympiad contains both individual and team contests. The individual contest consists of five problems covering the main fields of theoretical, mathematical and applied linguistics – phonetics, morphology, semantics, syntax, sociolinguistics, etc. – which must be solved in six hours.
Since the second IOL, the team contest has consisted of one extremely difficult and time-consuming problem. Teams, which generally consist of four students, are given three to four hours to solve it.
Like nearly all International Science Olympiads, its problems are translated and completed in several languages and as such must be written free of any native language constraints. However, unlike other olympiads, the translations are provided by the multilingual Problem Committee, a body of experts independent of the delegates' team leaders. Because competitors could gain an advantage if they are familiar with the language groups that are the subject of some of the assignments, problems are increasingly based on some of the world's lesser-known languages. Fortunately, with over 6,000 languages spoken worldwide (not including the so-called dead languages), there are plenty to choose from. Artificial languages and writing systems have been used in previous problems, and certain problems have been based on patterned systems not usually considered language, such as mRNA or barcodes, further increasing the range of choice. The presence of an independent Problem Committee and Jury means that team leaders do not have to be experts in the field (though most are): they can (and often do) work closely with their teams, providing last-minute coaching throughout the week of the competition.
In any case, the most helpful ability is analytic and deductive thinking, as all solutions must include clear reasoning and justification.
History The concept of self-sufficient linguistics problems was formulated in the 1960s, in the intellectual environment of the recently founded Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (OTiPL) of the Moscow State University. Moscow linguists in this environment were specially interested in understanding and modelling the formal and mathematical aspects of the natural languages; they were hatching things like the meaning-text theory, the Moscow School of Comparative Linguistics and the beginnings of what later became computational linguistics.
In 1963, Andrey Zaliznyak published a book called Linguistics problems (Лингвистические задачи), explaining in the introduction: Specially crafted problems can serve as an important tool for teaching the fundamental principles and methods of linguistics. In existing collections, the material used for problems is often drawn from the facts of students' native language or the most well-known European languages. While such tasks are undoubtedly beneficial, they often suffer from the disadvantage that it is challenging to separate the linguistic task itself (which requires nothing but understanding the basic linguistic principles) from testing specific knowledge of the language under consideration. The best (though not the only) way to get rid of that second element, which doesn't directly relate to general linguistics, is to create tasks based on material from languages unfamiliar to the students. Of course, it is more challenging to craft such problems, since all the essential specific facts necessary for solving the task must somehow be presented in the problem data. However, in this case, students only need an understanding of the properties of language in general.Original quote: Важным средством обучения основным положениям и методам языкознания могут служить специально составленные задачи. В существующих сборниках в качестве материала для задач в большинстве случаев используются факты родного языка учащихся или наиболее известных европейских языков. Такие задачи, безусловно, полезны, но, к сожалению, они часто страдают тем недостатком, что в них трудно отделить собственно лингвистическое задание (не требующее ничего, кроме понимания основных лингвистических положений) от проверки знания конкретных фактов рассматриваемого языка. Наилучший (хотя отнюдь не единственный) способ избавиться от этого второго элемента задания, не имеющего прямого отношения к общему языкознанию, состоит в том, чтобы составлять задачи на материале языков, незнакомых учащемуся. Разумеется, составлять такие задачи труднее, поскольку все существенные для решения конкретные факты должны быть так или иначе представлены в исходных данных задачи, зато от учащегося в этом случае требуется только представление о свойствах языка вообще. (p. 8)
Following the publication, the then-student proposed to the mathematics professor Vladimir Uspensky the creation of a high-school olympiad using such problems.
Thus, in 1965, the first edition of the Moscow's Traditional Olympiad on Linguistics and Mathematics was held, with an Organizing Committee composed of Uspensky (president), Igor Miloslavsky, Alexander Kibrik and . The Problem Committee consisted of Zhurinsky (the author of most of the problems) and Zaliznyak, plus Boris Gorodetsky (president), Alexandra Raskina and Victor Raskin. The Moscow Olympiad was held regularly until 1982 and resumed again in 1988, being still held nowadays.
In the next decades, olympiads using the format of self-sufficient linguistics problems started to appear in different regions: In 1984, professor Ruslan Mitkov founded the Bulgarian Olympiad of Mathematical Linguistics, open for high-school students of the whole Bulgaria. In this olympiad, each school could participate with 4 students, thus inspiring the format of the future IOL. From 2001, the Bulgarian Olympiad also started to feature a team competition. From 1988 to 2000, professor Thomas E. Payne from the University of Oregon organized a program with linguistics problems for high-school students in the city of Eugene, Oregon, United States. The format was very similar to the Moscow Olympiad, with which he had contact in 1986 when visiting the OTiPL in Moscow. From 2001 to 2006, the competition evolved into an online format, the Linguistics Challenge, which stimulated local linguistics competitions in different U.S. cities. This movement culminated in 2007 with the creation of the North American Computational Linguistics Open Competition. In 1995, a group of professors from the Saint Petersburg State University started to organize the Traditional Olympiad of Linguistics and Mathematics of Saint Petersburg, following a format very similar to that of the Moscow Olympiad. Decades later, in the 2010s, the olympiads of Moscow and Saint Petersburg merged to form a Russian National Linguistics Olympiad. In 2001, a group connected to the Leiden University, including Ruslan Mitkov, the founder of the Bulgarian Olympiad, and two other former participants of the Moscow Olympiad (Alexander Lubotsky participated from 1973 to 1976; Leonid Kulikov participated from 1981 to 1988), founded a Linguistics Olympiad for the Netherlands.
After the foundation of the Bulgarian olympiad, teams of the Moscow Linguistic Olympiad's winners successfully competed in Bulgaria and vice versa, demonstrating good potential for international cooperation in the field. With the multiplication of initiatives, the organizers of the different olympiads decided to organize, in 2003, the First International Olympiad in Theoretical, Mathematical, and Applied Linguistics, with six participating countries: Russia, with one team from the Moscow Olympiad and another from the Saint Petersburg Olympiad; Bulgaria, also with two teams, both from the Bulgarian Olympiad; Netherlands, with a team selected from its newly formed olympiad; Estonia, with a team from the olympiad organized in the same year by Renate Pajusalu and other professors from Tartu University; Latvia, with a team of students from Riga's Secondary School No. 40, the former school of Alexander Berdichevsky, then a master student at the OTiPL; Czech Republic, with a guest team.
Contests, year by year IOL 2003 The first edition of IOL then was realized from September 6 to 12, 2003, in the mountain resort Borovetz, Bulgaria, chaired by Alexander Kibrik from Moscow State University (MSU) and with the participation of six countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Netherlands, and Russia.
The first International Jury was composed of four people: Ivan Derzhanski (president) (Institute for Mathematics and Informatics of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), Alexander Berdichevsky (MSU), Boris Iomdin (Russian Language Institute) and Elena Muravenko (Department for Russian Language, Russian State University for the Humanities).
The five problems at the individual contest concerned Jacob Linzbach's "Transcendental algebra" writing system, Egyptian Arabic (Afroasiatic), Basque (isolate), Adyghe (Northwest Caucasian), and French (Indo-European). The team contest consisted of three problems: on Tocharian (Indo-European), the use of subscripts as indices, and on performative verbs.
IOL 2004 The 2nd IOL was held from August 2 to 6, 2004, in the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH), in Moscow, Russia. Chaired by Vladimir Alpatov, it gathered seven countries, with the first participation of Poland and Serbia and Montenegro.
The Problem Committee was chaired by Elena Muravenko. In addition to Berdichevsky, Derzhanski, and Iomdin, it also included Ksenia Gilyarova and Maria Rubinstein, both from the Russian State University for the Humanities.
The five problems at the individual contest were in Kayapo (Macro-Jê), Latin, English, Lakhota (Siouan) and Chuvash (Turkic). The team problem was in Armenian (Indo-European).
IOL 2005 The 3rd IOL was held from August 8 to 12, 2005, at Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands. Organized by a Local Committee composed by Alexander Lubotsky, Michiel de Vaan, Alwin Kloekhorst, Jesca Zweijtzer and Saskia Tiethoff, it had the participation of 13 teams from 9 countries, Finland and Romania for their first time. The Problem Committee was chaired by Ksenia Gilyarova.
The five problems at the individual contest concerned syntax in Tzotzil (Mayan), semantics in Lango (Nilotic), numbers in Mansi (Uralic), possessives in Yoruba (Atlantic–Congo) and accents in Lithuanian (Baltic). The team problem was in Figuig (Berber).
IOL 2006 The 4th IOL was held from August 1 to 6, 2006, at the University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia. Chaired by Renate Pajusalu, it received also 13 teams from 9 countries, with Lithuania sending a team for the first time. The Problem Committee was chaired by Alexander Berdichevsky.
The five problems at the individual contest were in Lakhota (Siouan) syntax, Catalan (Romanic) plural forms, Khmer (Austroasiatic) script, Udihe (Tungusic) possessives and Ngoni (Bantu) syntax. The team problem was in American Sign Language.
IOL 2007 The 5th IOL was held from July 31 to August 4, 2007, at the Hotel Gelios, Saint Petersburg, Russia. Chaired by Stanislav Gurevich, it received 15 teams from 9 countries; Spain, Sweden and the United States came for the first time. With the participation of the US, it was the first time that English language was one of the languages of the competition. The Problem Committee was chaired by Dmitry Gerasimov; with the participation of , it was the first time the Jury had a former IOL participant as a member.