1. The Linguistics Olympiad
Dick Hudson
James Allen’s Girls’ School, June 2017

2. Some brain sports Crossword puzzles Sudoku Chess Maths problems
Translation
Jigsaw puzzles
Linguistics Olympiad puzzles

3. Italian possessions – how many?
la casa ‘the house’
le case ‘the houses’
la mia casa ‘my house’
? ‘my houses’
le mie case

4. Italian possessions: gender
il lavoro ‘the job’
i lavori ‘the jobs’
? mi+? lavor+? ‘my job’
? mie+? lavor+? ‘my jobs’ il o o i i i

5. Italian possessions: who/what is possessed?
NOT la mia sorella
mia sorella ‘my sister’
le mie sorelle ‘my sisters’
mio cugino ‘my cousin’
I miei cugini ‘my cousins’
NOT il mio cugino

6. What’s the rule for using ‘the’?
Use ‘the’ with a possessive word (‘the my house’ for ‘my house’)
except with a singular family member
e.g. mia madre ‘my mother’
Compare English:
Use the with a singular countable noun (to the house, not *to house)
except with a senior family member
e.g. with Mum, but not: *with sister/daughter

7. So what? Every language follows rules.
Children discover the rules of their language.
Nobody creates the rules – they just evolve.
The study of these rules is linguistics (the science of language).
Discovering the rules can be interesting – and very satisfying!
Some rules are obvious and simple.
But rules often have exceptions.
The rules develop to help speakers, listeners or learners
So they may be similar across languages

8. Possession in Ulwa Ulwa is spoken in Nicaragua
It contains some English words
But it’s not English!
It featured in 2011 in a puzzle for the Linguistics Olympiad.

9. Ulwa (Nicaragua)
including you
Spot the words borrowed from English!

10. Zooming in on Ulwa Guess: our (inclusive) snake dii+ni+muih suffix
'infix'
Zooming in on Ulwa
Guess:
our (inclusive) snake
dii+ni+muih
-ni = "our (inc)"
-kana = "their"
-ma = "your (sing)"
-mana = "your (plur)"

11. What on earth is going on?
Possessors are affixes (word-parts, not complete words):
But why are some possessors at the end, and some in the middle?
end: bilam+kana, gaad+ni
middle: dii+kana+muih, sik+ni+bilh, pau+ni+mak
Answer: look at the syllables!
long = CVV or CVVC or CVC
short = CV
The rule: put the possessor after the first long syllable.
ni = our (inclusive)
ma = your (singular)
mana = your (plural)
kana = their

12. Welcome to the Linguistics Olympiad!
Try it!
Try the Breakthrough level first.
And welcome to the wonderfully surprising world of linguistics.