Logic & Linguistics
Launching soonSLLO
Sri Lanka Logic Olympiad
Launching soon. The national selection for the International Olympiad in Linguistics, built entirely on deduction rather than prior knowledge.
- Status
- Launching soon
- Selects for
- IOL
- Prerequisites
- None
- Entry fee
- Free
The olympiad
The Sri Lanka Logic Olympiad is the next national selection we are opening, and it will send Sri Lanka's first team to the International Olympiad in Linguistics.
Linguistics olympiad problems are self-contained logic puzzles. You are given a fragment of a language you have never seen, maybe its numbers or its verbs or its writing system, and you have to work out the rules from the evidence in front of you. There is nothing to memorise and nothing to look up. Every problem carries everything you need to solve it.
That makes it about as level a playing field as a competition can get. A student who has never sat in a linguistics class can win it on reasoning alone, which is why we want it running here.
Who can enter
- Sri Lankan school students
- Not yet enrolled in a university degree programme
- No linguistics background needed, genuinely none
What it covers
- Deductive reasoning
- Pattern recognition
- Morphology & syntax
- Phonology
- Writing systems
- Number systems
The path
How SLLO runs
2 competition rounds, each one cutting the field down further.
- 01
Qualifier Round
OnlineAn online paper of self-contained deduction problems drawn from languages around the world.
- 02
Final Round
OnsiteSat in person, with longer and harder problems. The top four become the Sri Lankan team.
Once the team is picked
What happens after the final round, on the way to the IOL.
Training
The team is coached in problem-solving technique, along with phonology, morphology and writing systems.
Team Sri Lanka at the IOL
One team of four represents Sri Lanka in the individual and team contests at the International Olympiad in Linguistics.
Also from IFSET