UKLO 2021

Two words around the verb

HintCount what vanishes when the sentence turns positive.

The whyPlenty of languages negate with a pair of little words, one before the verb and one after. In a puzzle, look at every line whose English contains 'not' and find the two puzzle words that appear only in those lines — then check that they always sit either side of the verb. In 2021 each part scored separately, so leaving one off lost a point.

The subject's gender

HintNot how many, not when — which kind of person.

The whyEnglish verbs never care whether the subject is he or she; many languages do, marking it on the verb with a prefix or ending. In a puzzle, compare 'the boy ran' with 'the girl ran': if the verb changed and nothing else did, that is what the change is marking.

Elision

HintEnglish does it in 'I'm' and 'don't'.

The whyWhen two vowels would bump together at a join, one often vanishes. It makes a regular rule look irregular: the stem seems to have two shapes. The fix is to look at what follows — if the short shape only ever appears before a vowel, you have found an elision rule, not a second stem.

A postposition

HintJapanese says the noun, then the little location word.

The why'House in' for 'in the house'. Japanese, Turkish and Hindi all do this. If a small word keeps following a noun in the data and matches an English preposition, it is one — and it must stay after its noun.

By word order alone

HintEnglish 'bus stop' or 'kitchen door' shows the same trick.

The whySome languages simply put owner and owned side by side, with no apostrophe-s, no 'of' and no ending. In a matching puzzle the clue is a pair of nouns sitting together where the English has 'X's Y'. Note which comes first — owner or thing — because the order is fixed even though nothing else is marked.

Repeated words

HintTally marks: how many times does each word occur in each column?

The whyCount how often each puzzle word appears, and how often each English word does; a word that occurs three times in one column must match a word that occurs three times in the other. Names are the easiest anchors, then repeated nouns, then sentence length. Once the anchors are placed, the one-off sentences fill themselves in by elimination.

agent

HintIn the passive sentence it is the one after 'by'.

The whySubject and agent usually coincide in English, but not always: in 'the mouse was chased by the cat' the subject is the mouse while the agent is still the cat. Puzzles that let the speaker emphasise one participant or the other need you to keep the two ideas apart — who is doing it, and who the sentence is about.

patient

HintThe opposite number of the agent — it undergoes rather than acts.

The whyAgent does, patient undergoes. Some languages mark the patient with a little word, others with an ending, and some let the verb itself say which participant is in focus. Whatever the device, a puzzle about 'who bought what' is asking you to track agent and patient line by line.

passive

HintThe version where 'by the cat' tacks on at the end.

The whyA voice change reshuffles which participant the sentence is about without changing who did what. Some languages have a verb form for 'agent in focus' and another for 'patient in focus', and use a marker word to flag the focused noun — the nearest English equivalent is choosing active or passive, or simply stressing a word aloud.

context

HintLook back at who was last named.

The whyFinnish, Turkish and many African languages have one pronoun for he and she. In a puzzle, the earlier part of the sentence, or the name it refers back to, tells you which English word to write.

start; subject; vowel

HintWhere the verb goes, where the joining word goes, and how more-than-one is shown.

The whyThree habits to check against any new data set. Verb position: is the doing word always at the front? Joining words: does 'and' or 'but' sit inside the sentence next to the doer, rather than between the halves? Plurals: does a noun swap its last sound rather than add one? Each is a rule you can test in one comparison.

A conjunction

HintTake it out and the sentence splits into two.

The whyIn a puzzle the same joining word may translate as 'and' in one line and 'but' in another — the language does not always split them. Look at the meaning of the two halves to choose. And note where it sits: in some languages it comes after the first noun rather than between the clauses.