1. Introduction
LOqUS, or the Linguistics Olympiad by qUALMS at State, is the Michigan State University Linguistics Olympiad event. It is broken down into two exams over the course of one day. There are two different "leagues", one for high schoolers and one for undergraduates.
The most general rules are that NO outside help is permitted for the exam.
In the first exam, working in small, pre-registered groups is allowed, but nobody may access the internet, books, or any other source that is not their own knowledge.
In the second exam, working in groups is not allowed, and outside help is still not permitted.
The LOqUS staff reserve the right to grade any exams as a 0 if they believe you or your team to be cheating.
2. The Group Exam
The first exam is the 2 hour long group exam. In groups of two or three, which must be made as part of the registration process, you will answer short-answer and long-answer questions related to data analysis in the fields of Phonetics and Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, and an undisclosed fourth category in the General Subjects List at the end of the document.
3. The Individual Exam
The second exam is the 1 hour long individual exam. As this suggests, you may not rely on your teammates to help you. It will consist of multiple choice and limited short-answer questions, with any category in the General Subjects List being allowed content for the exam.
4. The General Subjects List
Note: Items with a (*) will not be tested in the high schooler league.
Phonetics and Phonology
- The International Phonetic Alphabet
- Environment-Based Rules
- Rule Interaction (*)
- Neutralization (*)
- Feature Theory
- Language Games
Morphology
- Morpheme Types
- Reduplication
- Templatic
- Regular Morpheme Segmentation
- Morphophonology (*)
- Morphosyntax (*)
- Compounds
- Language Games
Syntax
- Trees
- Ambiguities
- Movement
- Head-Initial vs Head-Final Structures
- Verb Movement (*)
- Binding (*)
Semantics and Pragmatics
- Assertions
- Entailments
- Presuppositions
- Implicatures
- Quantifiers
- Negation
- Gricean Maxims
- Degrees
- Events (*)
- Theories of Meaning (*)
Child Language Acquisition
- Word Learning
- Morphological Development
- Syntactic Development
- Language Emergents
- Pronouns and Reflexives (*)
- Properties of Child-Directed Speech
- Questions (*)
- Syllabic Development
Sociolinguistics
- Code-Switching
- Language and Power
- Borrowings
- Relation of Class, Ethnicity, and Gender to Language
- Regional Variations in Phonology, Morphology, and Syntax
Historical Linguistics
- Sound Changes
- Morphological Changes
- Syntactic Changes
- Shifts (*)
- Borrowing
- Creoles and Pidgins
- Language Families
- Language Death (*)
Cognitive Science
- The Structure of the Brain
- Modularity of Mind
- Signing
- Animal Communication (*)
- Aphasia
- Dyslexia and Dysgraphia
- Computational Linguistics (*)