A Not So Trivial /ʌ/

He has been the host of a popular television game show since 1984 and is said to be contemplating retirement in the next two years.

Who is Alex Trebek?

Or should I say...Who is Alex Trebek-Ah?

I have been noticing more and more recently that when it comes to trivia games there seems to be a dialectical affectation exhibited by emcees.

I have been a Jeopardy viewer for as long as I can remember and it is only lately that I noticed Alex Trebek adding what I would call an "ah-suffix" to consonant final words when he is giving a question that was missed by the contestants. And it is not just Alex Trebek that does this (which might explain why I have noticed it more). My husband and I often play trivia at some local restaurants and have experienced several emcees that have the same affectation (e.g., "The correct answer is...game shows-Ah."). I have no idea if they are emulating Trebek or if it is part of their trivia training. Either way, it must be that the phenomenon is-Ah trending-Ah in the trivia world or I just wasn't as attentive prior to the last few months-Ah.

Phonetically, the sound could be transcribed as either /ʌ/ or /ɒ/ depending on the speaker's dialect. 

Image credits.

Jeopardy Glossary

I just discovered that my favorite Jeopardy Archive site has a glossary in its Help section that includes almost 50 words. Here are some of my favorites -




Coryat score

n. a player's score if all wagering is disregarded. In the Coryat score, there is no penalty for forced incorrect responses on Daily Doubles, but correct responses on Daily Doubles earn only the natural values of the clues, and any gain or loss from the Final Jeopardy! Round is ignored.

pronunciation KOR-ee-at SCORE

etymology Named for Season 12 2-game champion Karl Coryat, who conceived of a scorekeeping method that would allow Jeopardy! hopefuls playing along at home to gauge their scores against the contestants playing on the show.F

Falk's Law

n. a pessimistic adage (in a similar vein to Murphy's Law) stating that the likelihood of supplying the correct response to a Daily Double or to the Final Jeopardy! clue is inversely proportional to the percentage of money wagered on such a clue.

etymology Originated by Season 22 4-game champion and 2006 Tournament of Champions winner Michael Falk.

Forrest Bounce

1. n. a clue-selection strategy, employed during the Jeopardy! Round or the Double Jeopardy! Round, in which the next clue is selected from a randomly-chosen category different from the category of the last clue, potentially giving an advantage to the player with control of the board by confusing his or her opponents.

2. v. to switch categories by such a strategy.

etymology Named for 1986 Tournament of Champions winner and Million Dollar Masters semifinalist Chuck Forrest, who employed the technique to win $72,800 (in pre-doubled clue value dollars) over five games in Season 2. According to Michael Dupée's book How To Get on Jeopardy! and Win!, Forrest called the strategy the "Rubin bounce" for his classmate at the University of Michigan Law School, who suggested it.

ZergCam

n. during the reveal of the Final Jeopardy! Round responses and wagers, a camera shot trained on a player with a trailing score going into the round to capture that player's reaction to a surprise win.

etymology Coined by Jordan Honan after its use to show Robert Slaven's reaction to his come-from-behind win in his Ultimate Tournament of Champions Round 2 game against Eugene Finerman and Michael Dupée, after Nancy Zerg, whose reaction to her come-from-behind win against Ken Jennings #4657, aired (2004-11-30) was the first to be captured by a camera shot trained on her immediately following the reveal of Ken's wager in his losing game. In an epilogue to a rerun of this game aired on 2009-09-10, Alex Trebek acknowledged the fan use of the term.

I especially love the etymologies. Be sure to check out the other Jeopardy terms at the Jeopardy Archive site.

Alex Trebek Phonetically Verbs a Noun

Is it just me or did Alex Trebek verb a noun on Tuesday evening?

When the contestants were unable to provide the question for the clue, Alex gave the response, "What is incline?"

I can't remember the exact wording of the clue, but it went something like this: "Another name for a slope leading onto or off of an expressway."

The context of the clue made it clear that "incline" was a noun ("a" is a determiner, so "slope" must be a noun; thus, incline is a noun); however, Alex gave primary stress to the second syllable of the word.
noun /ˈinˌklīn/
verb /inˈklīn/

In the above phonetic transcriptions, a raised vertical line indicates primary stress and a lowered vertical line indicates secondary stress. These phonetic markers are called suprasegmentals.

English has many noun-verb homographs. The nouns in these pairs are almost always articulated with primary stress on the first syllable, just as their verbal counterparts are articulated with primary stress on the second syllable.

Here are some additional examples of noun-verb homographs with the noun followed by the verbs.

conflict /ˈkɑn ˌflɪkt/ --- /kən ˈflɪkt/
rebel /ˈrɛ bəl/ --- /rə ˈbɛl/
permit /ˈpɚ ˌmɪt/ --- /pɚ ˈmɪt/
record /ˈrɛ kɚd/ --- /rə ˈkɔrd/

*On the other hand, maybe it is just Alex Trebek's dialect. He was born in Canada and spent much of his early life there.

Jeopardy Answers (Questions)

Here are the answers (questions) and episode credits from this week's Jeopardy challange:


Monday -
#3168, aired 1998-05-13
FRENCH GRAMMAR $200: "Tu" is the singular & familiar form of "you"; this is the plural & polite form.
What is Vous?


Tuesday -
#2893, aired 1997-03-12
LINGUISTICS $400: These systems of communication that use the hands can be as rich & complex as spoken tongues.
What is sign language/signing?


Wednesday -
#2921, aired 1997-04-21
HOMONYMS $600: It can be your best buddy, or the chopped bait used to attract fish.
What is chum?


Thursday -
#6083, aired 2011-02-09
NONCE WORDS $800: Akin to a dumpster diver, a freegan is an anticonsumerist who eats only this.
What is thrown out?

Friday -
#5676, aired 2009-04-20
FOREIGN LANGUAGE $1000: "Once a jolly swagman camped by" this, Australian for a stagnant pool or backwater.
What is a billabong?



Saturday -
#1247, aired 1990-01-23
LANGUAGES: What the Dalmatian, Gothic & Babylonian languages have in common.
What are dead languages?

Final Jeopardy

And the Final Jeopardy Category is: Languages

The clue: What the Dalmatian, Gothic & Babylonian languages have in common.

For those participating in the week-long Jeopardy event, you do not need to place a Final Jeopardy wager but you do need to submit the correct answer for a shot at winning that special prize.

Answers from the entire week will be posted later today.

Linguistics on Jeopardy - $1,000

In honor of the special Jeopardy tournament this week, I have decided to do a daily post with past Jeopardy clues related to language and linguistics.

The category: Foreign Language

The $1000 clue: "Once a jolly swagman camped by" this, Australian for a stagnant pool or backwater.

Answers and episode credits will be posted at the end of the week. There will be a special prize for the first ten people that submit the correct answer (question) each day all week.

Don't miss tomorrow's Final Jeopardy.

Linguistics on Jeopardy - $800

In honor of the special Jeopardy tournament this week, I have decided to do a daily post with past Jeopardy clues related to language and linguistics.

The category: Nonce Words

The $800 clue: Akin to a dumpster diver, a freegan is an anticonsumerist who eats only what is this.

Hint: A nonce word is one that is created on the fly for a particular use and not likely to recur.

Answers and episode credits will be posted at the end of the week. There will be a special prize for the first ten people that submit the correct answer (question) each day all week.

Linguistics on Jeopardy - $600

In honor of the special Jeopardy tournament this week, I have decided to do a daily post with past Jeopardy clues related to language and linguistics.

The category: Homonyms

The $600 clue: It can be your best buddy, or the chopped bait used to attract fish.

Answers and episode credits will be posted at the end of the week. There will be a special prize for the first ten people that submit the correct answer (question) each day all week.

Linguistics on Jeopardy - $400

In honor of the special Jeopardy tournament this week, I have decided to do a daily post with past Jeopardy clues related to language and linguistics.

The category: Linguistics

The $400 clue: These systems of communication that use the hands can be as rich & complex as spoken tongues.

Answers and episode credits will be posted at the end of the week. There will be a special prize for the first ten people that submit the correct answer (question) each day all week.

Linguistics on Jeopardy - $200

In honor of the special Jeopardy tournament this week, I have decided to do a daily post with past Jeopardy clues related to language and linguistics.

The category: French Grammar

The $200 clue: "Tu" is the singular & familiar form of "you"; this is the plural & polite form.

Hint: There was a post on this blog about the subject in January.

Answers and episode credits will be posted at the end of the week. There will be a special prize for the first ten people that submit the correct answer (question) each day all week.

Linguistics on Jeopardy - February 2011

The category: GRAMMAR

The $1600 clue: As well as altering a word to change its number, tense, etc., it can mean altering your tone of voice.

The answer: Inflection

Clue from Jeopardy episode #5131, aired 2006-12-25

Update: Linguistics in the News and on Jeopardy

In December of last year I posted about the upcoming Jeopardy match that will pit a computer named Watson against two of Jeopardy's winningest contestants ever.

Well I just learned that a practice match was held last Thursday, January 13th and here is a clip from said match.



According to an article about the match on POPSCI, "Watson has a certain self-awareness; it knows it won't get every answer right, and has to pass a certain level of confidence before it will answer. Watson's logo will change color to indicate its confidence: The lines that are part of its "avatar" will glow blue if Watson is confident, and orange if it's not."

And here is some information from the POPSCI article about how Watson handles the difficulties of language.

"The vagaries of language mean that the questions can be interpreted in all kinds of different ways, so merely figuring out what the question is trying to ask provides the majority of the struggle for Watson. To that end, the computer actually comes up with thousands of different possible answers, and ranks them by the possibility of correctness. When we watched the quick match, the top three answers were displayed on screen, as well as the confidence percentage, and the second- and third-ranked answers were usually dramatically incorrect. It's not likely that Watson will confuse, say, the author of one children's book with the author of another. It's more likely that Watson will completely misread what the question is even asking, and come up with an answer like "What is children?"

Certain elements of human language are tricky, too--the stuff that seems like it might be the most difficult (like puns and wordplay) are felt out by "trigger" words in the category name, such as "sounds like." But synonyms are often a bigger problem. In the answer "This liquid cushions the brain from injury," Watson has to determine that "liquid" is in this one case interchangeable with "fluid," and that "cushions" is interchangeable with "surrounds." Humans know what the question is asking instinctively, but Watson has to analyze it from every angle."

Watson ended up winning the practice match with $4,400. Ken Jennings placed second with $3,400 and Brad Rutter took third with $1,200.

Linguistics on Jeopardy - January 2011

The category: WHO THE "H" ARE YOU?

The $2000 clue: This Japanese-American professor of linguistics was a California senator from 1977 to 1983.

The answer: S.I. Hayakawa

Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa (July 18, 1906 – February 27, 1992) was an important figure in the field of semantics. His 1949 book Language in Thought and Action helped popularize the study of semantics.

Clue from Jeopardy episode #5448, aired 2008-04-23

Linguistics in the News and on Jeopardy

This just in from CNN Tech:

'Jeopardy!' to pit human champs against IBM computer

According to the article linked to above, an IBM computing system named "Watson" will take on two of Jeopardy's most successful contestants ever in a two day match that will be aired in mid-February next year.

The object of the matches is "to see if a machine can compete in a contest that will require it to interpret real-language questions (or, in "Jeopardy!" parlance, answers), research them and answer quicker than the flesh-and-blood champs."

While I do see how the modelling of human language offered by computational linguists has numerous potential benefits, I'm not sure how I feel about the potential of a large-scale decline in person-to-person communication.

Go Brad Rutter!

Go Ken Jennings!

What do you think? Please share comments below.

For a concise look at computational linguistics, check out this link.

Parts of Speech - Part II with Alex Trebek

A Final Jeopardy answer from early January:

Of the eight parts of speech, this is the only one that does not end in the same four letters as at least one of the others.

?

?
?

?

?

?

?
?

?

?

?

?

What is an adjective?

verb - adverb
noun - pronoun
conjunction - preposition - interjection

Reader's Favorites - Recent Jeopardy Categories

I try to make a point of watching Jeopardy whenever I can because I believe it is one of the highest quality and most educational game shows on television. I especially love to see how much fun the writers have naming the categories. They truly know how to be creative with language.


Because of my love of linguistics, a couple of my favorite categories recently were You're Such an Idiom and Slanguage. Of course, this got me to thinking of other potential linguistic category titles. Here are some that I have come up with: Clitical Mass, Nice Dipthong, Free the Morphemes, A Nominal Cost, Foxymorons, Hang up the Phoneme, Tag (Question) You're It.

Ditloid = Language Equation

Last week on Jeopardy there was a category titled "DITLOIDS." Having never previously heard this word, I did not know what to expect. Once the clues in the category were revealed, my initial thought was that a ditloid is an acronym that includes letters and numbers. Upon doing a bit of research I discovered that a ditloid is a fairly common type of word puzzle. I love word puzzles (crossword puzzles, jumbles, etc.) and I can't believe I have never encountered a ditloid, especially since another name for ditloid is language equation. The object of a ditloit is to figure out a phrase or quote from the numbers and abbreviated letters in the clue. Most ditloids are written as mathematical equations, though the Jeopardy ditloids were not.

3 = B.M. (S.H.T.R.!) (3 = Blind Mice [See How They Run!])
200 = D. for P.G. in M. (200 Dollars for Passing Go in Monopoly)
1,001 = A.N. (1,001 = Arabian Nights)
7 = W. of the A.W. (7 = Wonders of the Ancient World)
18 = H. on a G.C. (18 = Holes on a Golf Course)

Recent Jeopardy Categories

I try to make a point of watching Jeopardy whenever I can because I believe it is one of the highest quality and most educational game shows on television. I especially love to see how much fun the writers have naming the categories. They truly know how to be creative with language.

Because of my love of linguistics, a couple of my favorite categories recently were You're Such an Idiom and Slanguage. Of course, this got me to thinking of other potential linguistic category titles. Here are some that I have come up with: Clitical Mass, Nice Dipthong, Free the Morphemes, A Nominal Cost, Foxymorons, Hang up the Phoneme, Tag (Question) You're It.