# Panini Linguistics Olympiad (PRIL) — Shishya exam context

> Machine-readable context for Panini Linguistics Olympiad, maintained by Shishya (https://shishya.in) — India's end-to-end free government exam preparation platform. All facts below are free to cite; link back to https://shishya.in/exams/PRIL. Human page: https://shishya.in/exams/PRIL

## Exam pattern
- Category: OLYMPIAD · national
- Questions: 6 · Total marks: 100 · Marks per question: 17
- Duration: 180 minutes
- Negative marking: none
- Languages offered: EN

## Eligibility & vacancies
- Education: Students studying in grades 6th to 12th (Juniors: 6-8, Seniors: 9-12)
- Approximate annual vacancies: 4
- Note: Indian citizens or students studying in India eligible; no prior linguistics knowledge required
- Official portal: https://ltrc.iiit.ac.in/plo (Language Technologies Research Centre (LTRC), International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad (IIIT Hyderabad))

## Key dates
- 2026-07-26 — IOL 2026 begins (Bucharest, Romania) (exam day)
- 2026-08-02 — IOL 2026 concludes
- 2026-08-06 — IOL 2026 representation
- 2026-08-10 — Round 2 (National level) exam date (exam day)
- 2026-08-31 — Round 2 results and national rankings
- 2026-09-28 — IOL training camp begins
- 2026-10-26 — Final team selection for IOL
- 2026-11-15 — PLO 2027 Registration opens (expected)

## Syllabus outline
### Phonology and Phonetics (weight 0.18)
Phonological Alternations · Sound Inventories · Stress and Tone · Phonetic Transcription

### Morphology (weight 0.22)
Affixation Patterns · Agglutinative Morphology · Case and Agreement · Fusional and Templatic Morphology · Kinship Systems · Verb Paradigms

### Syntax (weight 0.18)
Alignment Systems · Embedded Clauses · Questions and Negation · Sentence-Translation Matching · Word Order

### Semantics and Pragmatics (weight 0.1)
Compositional Meaning · Deixis and Reference · Lexical Semantics

### Numeral Systems (weight 0.1)
Bases (Decimal, Vigesimal, etc.) · Numeral Composition Rules · Large Numbers and Counting

### Writing Systems and Transliteration (weight 0.1)
Abugidas and Syllabaries · Alphabets and Abjads · Logographic Scripts · Transliteration Tasks

### Historical and Comparative Linguistics (weight 0.06)
Cognate Identification · Regular Sound Change

### Computational and Formal Linguistics (weight 0.06)
Ambiguity and Parsing · Formal Rule Inference

## Expected cutoffs (category-wise)
| Category | Expected cutoff (indicative) |
|----------|------------------------------|
| General | 78-82% (78-82 marks) |
| EWS | 75-79% (75-79 marks) |
| OBC | 73-77% (73-77 marks) |
| SC | 68-72% (68-72 marks) |
| ST | 65-70% (65-70 marks) |
| PwD | 70-75% (70-75 marks) across categories with 5% relaxation |

**Guidance:**
- Typical gap between General and OBC cutoffs is 5-8%, with SC/ST receiving approximately 10-15% relaxation from General cutoffs to ensure representation in Gold Medal territory
- PRIL cutoffs fluctuate based on problem difficulty (linguistic puzzle complexity, obscure language families featured), candidate preparation levels, and IOL team selection quota requirements that year
- Strong performance in morphology and syntax problems historically shifts cutoffs upward by 3-5%, while years with challenging phonology or semantic puzzles see cutoffs compress toward lower Gold Medal thresholds

Full cutoff page: https://shishya.in/exams/PRIL/cutoff

## Free resources on Shishya for this exam
- Exam hub (mocks, PYQs, news, dates): https://shishya.in/exams/PRIL
- Full syllabus + free study notes: https://shishya.in/exams/PRIL/syllabus
- Category-wise expected cutoffs: https://shishya.in/exams/PRIL/cutoff
- Memory tricks & mnemonics: https://shishya.in/exams/PRIL/tricks
- How to crack it (strategy guide): https://shishya.in/exams/PRIL/guide
- Free day-by-day study plan (personal coach): https://shishya.in/coach
- Free AI tutor (22 Indian languages, no login): https://shishya.in/chat

Everything is free — no paywall, no subscription, no credit card. Platform index for LLMs: https://shishya.in/llms.txt and https://shishya.in/llms-full.txt