/t/ for /d/ for word endings

[Landau, James]

It appears to me that the question Tom Zurinskas posed is merely part of
a more general rule, which I will attempt to state as follows:

In non-jocular, non-poetic English, the -ed suffix for past tense and
past participle and the -s suffix for third person singular and for
plurals is, with a few exceptions,
   1)  pronounced with as few syllables as possible, even at the risk of
ambiguity
   2)  the -ed is dropped for some (not all) one-syllable verbs ending
in /t/
   3)  in some (not all) cases where a word ending in -ed is used as a
stand-alone adjective, the -ed is a separate syllable although 1) would
have it as part of the preceding syllable.

Does the above sound reasonable?

3) takes care of "wretched", which is strictly an adjective (there is no
verb "to wretch".)  However the verb "to retch" has the one-syllable
past tense "retched".

Another example of 3) is "learned" which as a verb is one syllable ("she
learned, he has learned") but as an adjective is two syllables ("a
learned scholar").  I have no idea why this difference.

For 2), the past tense is "hit", "put", "burst" but "busted", "dratted"

For 1), consider "firsts", "seconds", and "thirds", all of which seem to
have been invented with the intention of preventing undocumented aliens
from speaking correct English.  The point is that if it be phonetically
possible to hang the /s/ or /d/ or /t/ onto the end of the existing
syllable, it is done.

As for Tom Zurinskas's example of "pushed in", I don't know how he
pronounces it but as best as I can hear, I say /poosht dIn/, splitting
the sound of the -ed between the two syllables and starting the voicing
with the second syllable.

Poetic usages:  Consider
    But Flynn let drive a single to the wonderment of all
    [and] the much despis-ed Blakely tore the cover off the ball
Where "despised" is to be pronounced as three syllables to maintain the
iambic heptameter.

Jocular usages:  deliberate mistakes in plural endings are common.
Consider

     Under the spreading chestnut tree         the village smithy
snoozes
     No horse since nineteen thirty-three      has come to him for
shoezes
(notice also the misuse of "smithy" for "smith")

     I hate those meeces to pieces

Which reminds me of the classical newspaper headline

     Nation's Hungry Attack Meece
(the reference is to Edwin Meese III, then Counselor to President
Reagan) in which a perfectly correct usage is easily misinterpreted as a
jocular plural (either of "mouse" or "moose", it doesn't matter which).

OT: Arnold Zwicky wrote and quoted from Beverly Flanigan:
>> Our friend dinis, on the other hand, can apparently get away with
this
>> more than I can, assuming leveling etc. are part of his authentic
>> childhood (and adult?) voice.
>
>ah, but dInIs has Linguistic License (issued to him, i believe, forty
years ago
>in wisconsin).

Professor Preston's given name is pronounced /dInIs/.  /dinis/ is his
brother's daughter.  His Linguistic License was issued to him in
Kentucky, not Wisconsin. Puh-lease!  (two syllables, hmm)  He was too
modest to accept a Kentucky Colonel's commission so he accepted the
License instead.


James A. Landau
test engineer
Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
West Atlantic City NJ 08232 USA

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-----Original Message  [somewhat edited] -----
From: Tom Zurinskas [mailto:truespel at HOTMAIL.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 4:12 PM
Subject: Re: /t/ for /d/ for word endings

I assume Barret was pointing out that some words with endings such as
listed below have, as he said, "sound ed" which includes a sound for
"e".
For instance "wretch" and "wretched".

> >From: Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIO.EDU>
> >Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 14:44:19 -0400
> >
> >
> >You mean Ben's email, don't you?  He raises the third environment at
> >issue here, as in "wanted," "waited," "raided," etc.
> >
> > >
> > > >
> > > > >From: Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
> > > > >Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 10:11:02 -0700
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >No. There's the -ed sound as well.
> > > > >
> > > > >Tom Zurinskas wrote:
> > > > > > Someone said the below.  Is this standard American
pronunciation?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > /t/ is voiceless and /d/ is voiced.  In standard American
> > > >pronunciation, verbs
> > > > > > that end with a voiceless sound (/f/k/p/s/sh/ch/) add /t/
> > > > > > for their -ed ending.
> > > > > > Verbs that end with a voiced sound add /d/ for their -ed
ending.

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