The Past Tense of Text

What is the correct past tense form of the verb to text?

This question has come up quite a bit recently in conversations I have had with friends. Because I generally prefer to view language descriptively rather than prescriptively, I was thrilled to see David Crystal's response to the question on his DC Blog post titled "On texted vs texed".

Following are some excerpts from his post that provide a condensed answer to the question:


... when text became a verb again in the 1990s, in the modern sense, it followed the normal pattern, and texted is the form given in all the dictionaries. So the interesting question is, why has an alternative form developed. ...

... Pronunciation is probably part of the answer. ...

... adding an -ed ending alters the pronunciation dynamic. We now have two /t/ sounds in a rapid sequence, as we had in broadcasted, and that could motivate people to drop the ending. Speakers generally prefer shorter forms. ...

... Whatever the reasons, we do now find forms such as texed and tex'd being used with increasing frequency. I think it's only a matter of time before we find it being treated like broadcast in dictionaries, and given two forms.


In regards to the above mention of "two /t/ sounds in a rapid sequence", the past tense -ed suffix can be phonetically realized as /t/, /d/ or /Id/depending on the final sound of the root morpheme and depending on the speaker's dialect.

Compare the words walked, buzzed and rested.

For most people walked will end in /t/, buzzed will end in /d/ and rested will end in /Id/.

The only time the -ed suffix is vocalized as /Id/ is when the final sound of the root morpheme is a /t/ or /d/.

Returning to Crystal's mention that "speakers prefer shorter forms", I suppose a case could be made for two different analyses of the phonological shortening of the verb texted.

1. The root-final /t/ is omitted thus the -ed suffix is pronounced as /t/.
2. The -ed suffix, which is more commonly realized as /t/ than /Id/, is deleted.

Quite the phonological conundrum, isn't it?

I still say /tektId/.

Morphophonology Rules (Actually, I Prefer Syntax and Semantics)

Following is a reader's comment on a recent post about paraprosdokians.

I've always loved gags like this -- "I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my father, not screaming and terrified like his passengers." — Bob Monkhouse



I never knew they had a name, so I did a Google search to find the proper pronunciation. Forvo.com says it's pronounced "para pros DOK ian," which is what I expected to find. However, the droll Brit at howjsay.com seems to have added a vowel where none exists in the spelling: "PARA pros(o) dokian."Is that an example of metathesis ?



And here is my response:

That would actually be an example of the morphophonological rule of insertion. Insertion is when a sound is inserted between two morphemes either for ease of articulation (to make the word easier to pronounce), or for ease of perception (to make it easier to hear every sound in a word), or both. British English speakers must not like having the morpheme /pras/ followed by the morpheme /dok/. I would guess that they insert the /o/ more for ease of perception than ease of articulation because the /s/ is in a syllable coda (end of the syllable) and the following /d/ is in a syllable onset (start of the syllable). Because the sounds in question are in two separate syllables, pronunciation should not be an issue. Are there any British English speakers who care to comment? I would love to hear from you.



I thought I would reprint this comment exchange because I always enjoy it when a post of mine piques a reader's curiosity and because I truly would love to hear what other readers think.