{"id":1377,"date":"2022-09-14T13:57:50","date_gmt":"2022-09-14T13:57:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/?p=1377"},"modified":"2022-09-15T11:50:59","modified_gmt":"2022-09-15T11:50:59","slug":"is-twote-the-past-of-tweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/2022\/09\/14\/is-twote-the-past-of-tweet\/","title":{"rendered":"Is twote the past of tweet?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever encountered the form<em> twote<\/em> as a past tense of the verb <em>to tweet<\/em>? It is something of a meme on Twitter, and a live example of analogy (and its mysteries). However surprising the form may sound if you have never encountered it, it has been the prescribed one for a long time:<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/Twitter\/status\/47851852070522880?s=20<\/p>\n<p>Ten years later, the question popped up among a linguisty Twitter crowd, where a poll again elected <em>twote<\/em> as the correct form:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Past tense of \u201cI tweet\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Emmett! (@WannabeLinguist) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WannabeLinguist\/status\/1419899690355679232?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 27, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>It is clear that this unusual form replacing <em>tweeted <\/em>is some sort of form, but why specifically\u00a0<em>twote<\/em>? I saw here and there a reference to the verb <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/words-at-play\/yeet-meaning-and-history\">to yeet<\/a><\/em>, a slang verb very popular on the internet and meaning more or less &#8220;to throw&#8221;. Rather than a regular form\u00a0<em>yeeted,\u00a0<\/em>the past for\u00a0<em>to yeet<\/em> is often taken to be <em>yote<\/em>. The choice of an irregular form is probably meant to produce a comedic effect.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Yeet -&gt; yote<br \/>Tweet -&gt; twote<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; D2 Postin&#39; \u2b1b\ufe0f\u2b1c\ufe0f\ud83d\udfea (@destiny_thememe) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/destiny_thememe\/status\/1414292648597213184?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 11, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>This, precisely, is <strong>analogical production: <\/strong>creating a new form (<em>twote<\/em>) by extending a contrast seen in other words (<em>yeet\/yote<\/em>). Analogy is a central topic in my research. I have been trying to answer questions such as: How do we decide what form to use ? How difficult is it to guess? How does this contribute to language change?<\/p>\n<p>But first, have you answered the poll?<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Here at the SMG we need to know:<br \/>What do you think the past tense of &#39;I tweet&#39; is?<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Surrey Morphology (@SurreySMG) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SurreySMG\/status\/1567451605955497985?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 7, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>What is the past tense of &#8220;to tweet&#8221;?<\/h2>\n<p>To investigate further why we would say <em>twote <\/em>rather than <em>tweeted<\/em>, I took out my PhD software (<a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/XachaB\/Qumin\">Qumin<\/a>). Based on 6064 examples of English verbs<sup><a href=\"#footnote_0_1377\" id=\"identifier_0_1377\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"The English verb data I used includes only the present and past tenses, and is derived from the CELEX 2 dataset, as used in my PhD dissertation and manually supplemented by the forms for &ldquo;yeet&rdquo;. The CELEX2 dataset is commercial, and I can not distribute it.\">1<\/a><\/sup>, I asked Qumin to produce and rank possible past forms of <em>tweet<\/em><sup><a href=\"#footnote_1_1377\" id=\"identifier_1_1377\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"The code I used for this blog post is available here, but not the dataset itself. Note that for scientific reasons I won&rsquo;t discuss here, this software works on sounds, not orthography.\">2<\/a><\/sup><em>.<\/em> To do so, it read through examples to construct analogical rules (I call them patterns), then evaluated the probability of each rule among the words which sound like <em>tweet<\/em>. <em><br \/>\n<\/em><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/cavaticat\/status\/1212056421082251265<\/p>\n<p>Qumin found four options<sup><a href=\"#footnote_2_1377\" id=\"identifier_2_1377\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"One last possibility has been ignored by this polite software, a form which follows the pattern of sit\/sat. I see it used from time to time for its comic effect, but it does not seem at all frequent enough to be a real contestant (and I do not recommend searching this keyword on Twitter).\">3<\/a><\/sup>: <em>tweeted (\/twi\u02d0t\u026ad\/),<\/em> by analogy with 32 similar words, such as <em>greet\/greeted<\/em><em>; twet<\/em> (\/tw\u025bt\/), by analogy with words like <em>meet\/met; <\/em><em>tweet<\/em> (\/twi\u02d0t\/) by analogy with words like <em>beat\/beat<\/em><em>, <\/em>finally <em>twote<\/em> (\/tw\u0259\u02d1\u028at\/), by analogy with <em>yeet. <\/em>Figure 1 provides their ranking (in ascending order) according to Qumin, with the associated probabilities.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1430\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1430\" style=\"width: 360px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-1430\" src=\"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/meme-twote-brain.jpeg\" alt=\"Twote 0.028 &lt; tweet 0.056 &lt; twet 0.056 &lt; tweeted 0.86\" width=\"360\" height=\"505\" srcset=\"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/meme-twote-brain.jpeg 500w, https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/meme-twote-brain-214x300.jpeg 214w, https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/meme-twote-brain-193x270.jpeg 193w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1430\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Figure 1. Qumin&#8217;s ranking of the probability for potential past forms of <em>to tweet<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>As we can see, Qumin finds <em>twote<\/em> to be the least likely solution. This is a reasonable position overall (indeed, <em>tweeted<\/em> is the regular form), so why would both the official Twitter account and many Twitter users (including several linguists) prefer <em>twote <\/em>to <em>tweeted<\/em>?<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\"><span style=\"font-size: 13pt;\">speak \/ spoke<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 13pt;\">write \/ wrote<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 13pt;\">tweet \/ twote??<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 13pt;\">:\/<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"font-size: 13pt;\">:\/\/\/<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 13pt;\">\u2014 rax king (@RaxKingIsDead) <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RaxKingIsDead\/status\/1035540248674091010?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\"><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">August 31, 2018<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But Qumin has no idea what is cool, a factor which makes <em>yeet\/yote<\/em> (already a slang word, used on the internet) a particularly appealing choice. Moreover, Qumin has no access to semantic similarity, which could also play a role. Verbs that have similar meanings can be preferred as support for the analogy. In the current case, both <em>speak\/spoke<\/em> and <em>write\/wrote<\/em> have similar pasts to <em>twote<\/em>, which might help make it sound acceptable. Some speakers seem to be aware of these factors, as seen in the tweet above.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Is it twankt or twunkt? I&#39;m thinking about the past-tense of tweet.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Duncan Post (@BigDunkCan) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/BigDunkCan\/status\/1565161127000039424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 1, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>What about usage?<\/h2>\n<p>Are most speakers aware of the variant\u00a0<em>twote <\/em>and using it? Before concluding that the model is mistaken, we need to observe what speakers actually use. Indeed, only usage truly determines &#8220;what is the past of tweet&#8221;. For this, I turn to (automatically) sifting through Twitter data.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1383\" src=\"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/meme-twote-choic.jpeg\" alt=\"Speakers must choose between tweeted or twote: what a dilemna !\" width=\"274\" height=\"414\" srcset=\"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/meme-twote-choic.jpeg 500w, https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/meme-twote-choic-198x300.jpeg 198w, https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/meme-twote-choic-179x270.jpeg 179w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 274px) 100vw, 274px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A few problems: first, the form &#8220;tweet&#8221; is also a noun, and identical to the present tense of the verb. Second, &#8220;twet&#8221; is attested (sometimes as &#8220;twett&#8221;), but mostly as a synonym for the noun &#8220;tweet&#8221; (often in a playful &#8220;lolcat&#8221; style), or as a present verbal form, with a few exceptions, usually of a meta nature (see tweets below). I couldn&#8217;t find a way to automatically distinguish these from past forms while also managing within the Twitter API limits. Thus, I left out both from the search entirely. This leaves only our two main contestants.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">If it&#39;s not already been formally done, I should now like to declare the past tense of &quot;tweet&quot; to be &quot;twet&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Today I &quot;tweet&quot;, yesterday I &quot;twet&quot;.<\/p>\n<p>Hello? Webster? Funk and Wagnall? <br \/>Anybody there?<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Bob Valvano (@espnVshow) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/espnVshow\/status\/1131915058144059393?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">May 24, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Today I tweet, yesterday I \u2018twet\u2019 \ud83d\ude02\ud83d\ude02\ud83d\ude02\ud83d\ude02\ud83d\ude02\ud83d\ude02. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/JHJleKDicg\">https:\/\/t.co\/JHJleKDicg<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; COCONUT \ud83e\udd65\ud83c\udfb6 -APRIL 5\u203c\ufe0f (@lijitimate) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lijitimate\/status\/1414958532802318340?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 13, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">it is better to tweet and delete than to have never have twet at all<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Sylvie Borschel (@hellosylv) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hellosylv\/status\/1411392031910514690?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 3, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I extracted as many recent tweets containing <em>tweeted <\/em>or\u00a0<em>twote<\/em> as Twitter would let me &#8212; around 300 000 tweets twotten between the 26th of August and the 3rd of September. 186777 tweets remained after refining the search<sup><a href=\"#footnote_3_1377\" id=\"identifier_3_1377\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-identifier-link\" title=\"Since there has been a lot of discussion on the correct form, I exclude all clear cases of mentions. I count as mentions any occurrences wrapped in quotations, co-occurring with alternate forms, mentioning past tense, or with a hashtag. Moreover, with the forms in &ndash;ed, it is likely that the past participle would be identical, but for twote, the past participle could well be twotten. To reduce the bias due to the presence of more past participles in the usage of tweeted, I also exclude all contexts where the word is preceded by the auxiliary forms has, have, had, is, are, was, were, possibly separated by an adverb.\">4<\/a><\/sup>. Of these, less than 5000 contain <em>twote<\/em>:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1423\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1423\" style=\"width: 402px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1423\" src=\"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/ranking_2V.png\" alt=\"There were more than 180000 occurences of tweeted and less than 5000 of twote in the past few days.\" width=\"402\" height=\"402\" srcset=\"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/ranking_2V.png 576w, https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/ranking_2V-300x300.png 300w, https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/ranking_2V-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/ranking_2V-270x270.png 270w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 402px) 100vw, 402px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1423\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Counts of tweets containing either of two possible pasts for the verb &#8220;to tweet&#8221; in the past few days on twitter (mentions excluded).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>As you can see, the <em>tweeted <\/em>bar completely dwarfs the other one. However amusing and fitting\u00a0<em>twote<\/em> may be, and despite @Twitter&#8217;s prescription (but conforming with Qumin&#8217;s prediction), the regular past form is by far the most used, even on the platform itself, which lends itself to playful and impactful statements. This easily closes this particular English Past Tense Debate. If only it were always this simple!<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<ol class=\"footnotes\"><li id=\"footnote_0_1377\" class=\"footnote\">The English verb data I used includes only the present and past tenses, and is derived from the <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.35111\/gs6s-gm48\">CELEX 2<\/a> dataset, as used in my PhD dissertation and manually supplemented by the forms for &#8220;yeet&#8221;. The CELEX2 dataset is commercial, and I can not distribute it.<span class=\"footnote-back-link-wrapper\"> [<a href=\"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/2022\/09\/14\/is-twote-the-past-of-tweet\/#identifier_0_1377\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\" title=\"Jump back to text\" aria-label=\"Jump back to text\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><li id=\"footnote_1_1377\" class=\"footnote\">The code I used for this blog post is available <a href=\"https:\/\/gitlab.com\/sbeniamine\/twote\">here<\/a>, but not the dataset itself. Note that for scientific reasons I won&#8217;t discuss here, this software works on sounds, not orthography.<span class=\"footnote-back-link-wrapper\"> [<a href=\"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/2022\/09\/14\/is-twote-the-past-of-tweet\/#identifier_1_1377\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\" title=\"Jump back to text\" aria-label=\"Jump back to text\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><li id=\"footnote_2_1377\" class=\"footnote\">One last possibility has been ignored by this polite software, a form which follows the pattern of <em>sit\/sat<\/em>. I see it used from time to time for its comic effect, but it does not seem at all frequent enough to be a real contestant (and I do not recommend searching this keyword on Twitter).<span class=\"footnote-back-link-wrapper\"> [<a href=\"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/2022\/09\/14\/is-twote-the-past-of-tweet\/#identifier_2_1377\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\" title=\"Jump back to text\" aria-label=\"Jump back to text\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><li id=\"footnote_3_1377\" class=\"footnote\">Since there has been a lot of discussion on the correct form, I exclude all clear cases of mentions. I count as mentions any occurrences wrapped in quotations, co-occurring with alternate forms, mentioning past tense, or with a hashtag. Moreover, with the forms in &#8211;<em>ed<\/em>, it is likely that the past participle would be identical, but for <em>twote<\/em>, the past participle could well be <em>twotten. <\/em>To reduce the bias due to the presence of more past participles in the usage of <em>tweeted, <\/em>I also exclude all contexts where the word is preceded by the auxiliary forms <em>has, have, had, is, are, was, were,<\/em> possibly separated by an adverb.<span class=\"footnote-back-link-wrapper\"> [<a href=\"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/2022\/09\/14\/is-twote-the-past-of-tweet\/#identifier_3_1377\" class=\"footnote-link footnote-back-link\" title=\"Jump back to text\" aria-label=\"Jump back to text\">&#8617;<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Have you ever encountered the form twote as a past tense of the verb to tweet? It is something of a meme on Twitter, and a live example of analogy (and its mysteries). However surprising the form may sound if you have never encountered it, it has been the prescribed one for a long time: https:\/\/twitter.com\/Twitter\/status\/47851852070522880?s=20 Ten years later, the question popped up among a linguisty Twitter crowd, where a poll again elected twote as the correct form: Past tense&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/2022\/09\/14\/is-twote-the-past-of-tweet\/\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,4,8,75,2,22,87,29],"tags":[],"coauthors":[156],"class_list":["post-1377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analogy","category-english","category-english-languages","category-lexicon","category-morphology","category-prescriptivism","category-speaker-variation","category-tense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1377"}],"version-history":[{"count":59,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1445,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1377\/revisions\/1445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1377"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morph.surrey.ac.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}