"Pit" as the past tense of "pit"

[Neal Whitman]

Heard on NPR Morning Edition today, in a story about Ivory Coast by Ofeibea
Quist-Arcton:

(starting at 1:33)
Reconciliation and healing because of the bitter split in Ivory Coast
following a 2002 coup that ballooned into a rebellion. It PIT pro-Ouattara
rebels in the predominantly Muslim north of the country against those who
backed Ouattara's longtime political foe, then-president Laurent Gbagbo in
the predominatnlyc Christian south.
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/12/135788743/new-ivorian-leader-faces-challenges-criticism

"Pit": a new (to me) addition to the list of monosyllabic verbs ending in
[V -tense]+[t] with irregularized past tenses identical to the base verb.
Arnold has dubbed them "bare past verbs", and has other examples of
past-tense "pit", which I must have missed at the time:
http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2008/12/25/whats-the-past-tense-of-the-verb-text/.

"Pet" as the past tense of "pet" came up in this brief thread in 2009:
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ADS-L;U%2BTbZA;200309141158310700B
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ADS-L;zkvC1w;200309141907190500B

I've written about "bare past verbs" on my blog a few times, too:
http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2006/08/25/the-irregularization-of-pet/
http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2007/03/24/he-grit-his-teeth/
http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/retrofit-and-reverse-engineer-shameful-synonymy/

Neal Whitman
Email: nwhitman at ameritech.net
Blog: http://literalminded.wordpress.com

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org