Hooked on Linguistics - Center for Talented Youth

1 Hooked on Ling by Rebecca Jacobs I. t all started with Steven Pinker's book The Language On the official NACLO testing day Instinct. I was 13 and interested in cognitive science, in March, I logged on for the five-hour, but I had no idea what Linguistics was until this eight-problem test. The first problem book opened my mind to the incredible complexity of required determining whether several language. When I finished it, I spent hours reading about invented English adjectives described good or Linguistics on websites like Language Log and Wikipedia bad qualities, using sentences like Strungy and and, later, in Linguistics textbooks. struffy, Diane's performance was a pleasure to watch and After a while, my family's dinner conversations Carla is blitty but struffy.

2 The problems in the first half turned to interesting features of different languages. For got progressively harder but still were manageable. The instance, Ubykh, a recently extinct language spoken in second half had more of a computational or theoretical the Caucasus, has 84 different consonants (more than any Linguistics focus. One problem required considering other language) and only two vowels (the smallest possible errors in three sets of English text, characterizing the number), while Rotokas, spoken in Papua New Guinea, nature of those errors, and explaining how a computer has only six consonants and five vowels, the smallest program might fix them. number of sounds in any language. I was fascinated that Once the exam was over, I took a deep breath and languages could express essentially the same concepts in began the month-long wait for the results.

3 Such vastly different ways. Linguistics which I discovered is not an attempt to learn many languages, but rather Where There's a Will a scientific study of the structures of languages was The summer before my sophomore year, I attended engrossing and challenging. I was Hooked . the six-week Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics (HCSSiM) a fun and intense experience Olympic Dreams that I wanted to replicate the next summer, but in In my sophomore year of high school, I read a Linguistics program. I was excited to discover the announcements on Language Log and the Art of Linguistics Society of America's four-week summer Problem Solving forums that a North American institute, held at Stanford that year, which promised Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO) a variety of courses taught by some of the nation's top would be held in the spring.

4 The top four students linguists. I promptly joined the LSA and registered for would travel to Russia to represent the at the fifth the institute. International Linguistics Olympiad. It would be the A few days later, the coordinators e-mailed to ask first time the sent a team to the ILO. Determined if I was a teacher at the high school I had listed as my to do as well as possible at NACLO, I solved all the affiliation. I told them that I was a student and that I. practice problems I could find online. would be 15 during the summer. The reply was, We need to talk to your parents. Over spring break, we Dragomir Radev 2007 ILO competitors traveled to Stanford to meet with Peter Sells, the Michael Gottlieb, Rebecca program director. Jacobs, Adam Hesterberg, Josh I spent a good part of the meeting talking with Falk, and Jeffrey Lim pose with Dr.

5 Sells about Linguistics books, invented languages, coach Dragomir Radev. Adam and other Linguistics topics. Then he and my parents Hesterberg won the top award discussed how a rising high school junior could in the individual competition. participate in a program designed for graduate students. Permission granted, I eagerly began to register for courses: Intro to Computational Linguistics , Intro to Morphology, Intro to Phonology, and Intro to Semantics. And then the results from the North American 28 imagine March/April 2008. guistics Dragomir Radev To Russia and Beyond My parents and I arrived at the hotel in Zelenogorsk, near St. Petersburg, on the Monday night before the ILO. For most of us, this was the first time we had seen our teammates in person.

6 We spent most of Tuesday Computational Linguistics Olympiad came out. I had doing practice problems for the competition under the tied for fifth place with a friend from HCSSiM. This direction of our coaches, Dr. Radev and Dr. Levin. meant that both of us could be alternates, but I was not The individual round of the competition lasted six The team of Josh Falk, satisfied. I asked the coach, Dr. Radev, if I could compete hours. The first problem asked us to write an English Rebecca Jacobs, Anna as an individual, or if another team could be sent. He sentence in Braille given a few example sentences. I Tchetchetkine, and Michael decided to send two teams, although the NACLO finished it quickly, and moved on to the next problem, Gottlieb won first place in the sponsors would fund only one (the second team had to which focused on how to negate words in Movima (a 2007 ILO team competition.))

7 Pay most of their own expenses). language spoken in Bolivia and unrelated to any other Dr. Radev began to send us practice problems from known languages). After this came the two hardest old ILOs and set up a few Internet chat sessions for us problems: one where we had to match conjugated to practice group problem solving. Meanwhile, the LSA Georgian verbs with their English translations, and summer institute was rapidly approaching. another that gave the Ndom phrases for the first 10. positive perfect squares and asked for their translations From LSA to ILO and the translations of other numbers and equations. When my parents and I arrived at Stanford, a student The last problem required finding rules predicting word greeted us and helped us find the registration area, and correspondences between the closely related languages she and I talked about what classes we were taking.

8 I soon Turkish and Tatar. met syntacticians, sociolinguists, computational linguists, We spent the next day touring St. Petersburg, playing and specialists in many other areas of Linguistics , and each card games, and preparing for the three-hour team had interesting research to tell me about. competition. This exam had only one problem: we Each course met twice a week. Phonology covered were given an empty geneaological chart (showing only theories underlying sound patterns in languages. parent-child relations) and a list of (unnamed) people on In the morphology class, we studied the ways parts that chart with familial relations to (named) others on of words combine in various languages, such as that chart. All relations were given in Hawaiian.

9 Ours Yup'ik (spoken in Alaska). Semantics centered on was one of only four teams to reach the correct answer predicate logic and lambda calculus two methods to (or any answer), and we shared the first place prize with represent the meaning of sentences in an abstract way. the Moscow team. The ILO organizers were pleased but Computational Linguistics , my favorite class, taught surprised that we did so well, given that it was our first us how to implement computational tasks, such as time competing. tagging words in a sentence with their parts of speech, Since the ILO, I have continued to study Linguistics or automatically diagramming sentences given a set independently. I hope to attend the 2009 LSA institute of rules. and possibly get an internship in computational I also attended a variety of lectures and workshops.

10 Linguistics and artificial intelligence. I have started One of these discussed careers for linguists in industry. I touring colleges and evaluating their Linguistics learned that linguists are often employed by companies departments. I'll probably double-major in math and such as Google that develop search engines, machine Linguistics , the intellectual passion first ignited by The translation, and speech recognition software. Before Language Instinct and that now illuminates my future. i I discovered Linguistics , I had assumed that I would get a degree in mathematics and use it for industry Rebecca Jacobs is a junior at Harvard- applications. I was glad to know that the same was Westlake School in California, where she possible with a Linguistics degree.