京都大学チャレンジセミナー2020 in TOKYO 模擬授業「言語学をフィールドワークする」 参考資料Ⅰ

Japanese

Braille is tactile , based on a series of raised dots, that is widely used by the blind. It was invented in 1821 by write French, but has since been adapted to many other . English, which uses the Roman just as French does, required very little adaptation, but languages that do not use the Roman alphabet, such as Japanese, Korean, or Chinese, are often organized in a very different manner!

To the right is a Japanese word written in the tenji (“dot characters”) writing system. The large dots represent the raised bumps; the tiny dots karaoke represent empty positions.

1. The following tenji words represent atari, haiku, katana, kimono, koi, and sake . Which is which? You don’ need to know either Japanese or Braille to figure it out; you’ll find that the system is highly logical.

a. .

. .

. .

2. What are the following words?

. .

3. Write the following words in tenji characters:

. samurai . miso

Problem by Patrick Littell for the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad 2009 京都大学チャレンジセミナー2020 in TOKYO 模擬授業「言語学をフィールドワークする」 参考資料Ⅱ

Seventh International Olympiad in Linguistics (2009). 3 Individual Contest Problems

Problem #3 (20 points). Here are the names of 24 Burmese children and their dates of birth: boys girls name date of birth name date of birth kau6 myaP 06/01/2009 pa6 06/04/2009 zeiya cO 06/09/2009 thou6 u6 06/06/2009 pyesou6 au6 06/18/2009 khi6 le nwE 06/08/2009 li6 06/20/2009 wi6 i mu6 06/10/2009 lwi6 koko 06/24/2009 mimi khai6 06/18/2009 phou6 nai6 thu6 06/25/2009 myaP 06/30/2009 myo khi6 wi6 07/02/2009 susu wi6 07/07/2009 ti6 mau6 laP 07/04/2009 yadana 07/08/2009 khai6 mi6 thu6 07/06/2009 ti6 za 07/11/2009 wi6 cO au6 07/08/2009 yi6yi6 myi6 07/15/2009 thEP au6 07/11/2009 keþi thu6 07/20/2009 sha6 thu6 07/21/2009 shu ma6 cO 07/21/2009 On 06/14/2009, 06/16/2009, 06/24/2009, 07/09/2009, 07/13/2009, and 07/18/2009 six other Burmese children were born. Here are their names:

boys: Nwe si6þu, so mo cO, yE au6 nai6 • girls: daliya, e ti6, phyuphyu wi6 • Who was born when? ! The Burmese names are given in a simplified Roman transcription. c = in church, E a " inþhat, h indicates that the preceding consonant is aspirated (pronounced with a puff of air), = ng in hang, 6 indicates that the preceding vowel is nasal, a in hall, þ English th in with, " " = y in yay!, P is a consonant (the so-called ). —Ivan Derzhanski, Maria Cydzik

Problem #4 (20 points). Given are Old Indic word stems which are thought to preserve the most ancient (Indo-European) position of the stress. They are divided into root and suffix by a . The stressed vowel bears the mark ´þ.