Secondary school students test logic skills in national linguistics competition

The Fresno State Department of Linguistics welcomed 19 middle and high school students from across Central California to compete in the North American Computational Linguistics Open. The competition involved linguistic puzzles and computational problems that test students’ logic and pattern recognition. No previous experience in linguistics was required for students to enter.

“The problems are linguistic puzzles from real language data, and some of the problems are related to chatbot-type issues,” said Dr. Brian Agbayani, professor of linguistics at Fresno State.  “All the competitors really need are basic logic and pattern recognition skills. They don’t need to know anything about linguistics.” 

The students compete against others around the United States and Canada. The linguistic puzzles are a closely guarded secret as all the students compete in simultaneously held events. Competitors that do well move on to the next round, the North American Computational Linguistics Invitational on March 13th. The final international round, the International Linguistics Olympiad, will be held in Taiwan in July.

This is the first year Fresno State is hosting the North American Computational Linguistics competitions. Agbayani said they are planning to host more competitions in the future.

“I think it’s a great opportunity for our local students to get involved.”

Computational linguistics provides students with logic, pattern recognition and problem-solving skills that are applicable in math, computer science and linguistics careers, including emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models.