Linguistics Club at CMS
Middle School and High School
Club Rotation E
We meet in Room 200
Club Rotation E
We meet in Room 200
Next meeting: 11/11/2024; 12/11/2024
Please be sure to opt in to the club or else you cannot attend the meetings. If you are having difficulty with this process, please contact Mr. Noelle or Mrs. Boost.
Sign up for the Remind by texting @cmslin to 81010.
Description: We discuss language learning, current issues, and etymology, and we work on logic puzzles which focus on questions involving finding patterns in other languages. All of the information you need to solve the puzzles is in the puzzles themselves. All you need to add is some analytical reasoning and tricky thinking.
If this sounds appealing, come to Linguistics Club in room 110 during Rotation A. If you like it, you can work with other students to be a part of the team which will represent Central Magnet School at the MTSU Linguistics Olympiad in the spring semester. Stay tuned!
If this sounds appealing, come to Linguistics Club in room 110 during Rotation A. If you like it, you can work with other students to be a part of the team which will represent Central Magnet School at the MTSU Linguistics Olympiad in the spring semester. Stay tuned!
At our first meeting, we looked at a puzzle of the language Nizaa. Here is a copy of the puzzle, and here is a copy of the solution once you are finished. Don't forget part 2!
ANNOUNCEMENT!
- WHAT? BFLO 2024 (Annual Fall Linguistics Olympiad at BGA)
- WHEN? Saturday, November 9, 2024, competition in the morning (ca. 9-11:30am)
- WHO? All Tennessee students grades 5-12 in public, private, or home schools and their parents or school sponsors
- HOW MUCH DOES IT COST? Free
- WHY? To have fun and to encourage Tennessee students to “hack languages” and develop skills that will put them at the head of the field of Computational Linguistics and/or help them qualify for the invitational round of NACLO (the national level competition)
- WHAT DO YOU DO AT A LINGUISTICS OLYMPIAD? Students compete alone or in groups to decode language-based puzzles using analytical methods and logic. Some puzzles are on presumably unknown languages (ancient Egyptian or modern Latvian) but provide enough data to get kids started. Some puzzles ask you to break down the structure of the English language in a methodical way—as a computer might do.
We'll discuss this at the next meeting but look for a Remind message and see Mrs. Boost or Mr. Noelle about competing.
Check out this site for some other puzzles: Linguistics Challenge Puzzles (princeton.edu)
Here are lots of ONLINE practice problems (PDFs also available).
Helpful Links and Resources:
MTSU Linguistics Olympiad Schedule
Omniglot: the online encyclopedia of alphabets and languages
English Etymology
Google's Endangered Languages Project
National Geographic Enduring Voices Project (endanged languages)
Buy these online if you are interested:
A Linguistics Workbook:Companion to Linguistics, Sixth Edition (2010)
Ann K. Farmer & Richard A. Demers
ISBN# 978-0-262-51482-8
Looking at Languages: A Workbook in Elementary Linguistics (2011)
Paul R. Frommer & Edward Finegan
ISBN# 978-0-495-91231-6
Lang101 Workbook: Linguistics Exercises & Activities for Starters (2012)
Madalena Cruz-Ferreira & Sunita Anne Abraham
ISBN# 978-1475057362
An Introduction to Language (2010)
Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, & Nina Hyams
ISBN# 978-1-4282-6392-5
Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication (2010)
Adrian Akmajian, Richard A. Demers, Ann K. Farmer, & Robert M. Harnish
ISBN# 0-262-01185-9