> > [Torsten:] As I've heard it, the tendency in American English
today is for the
> past participle to be used everywhere eg.: "I have went", "I have
took".
>
> [Piotr:] "The past participle" ??? And can any American English
speakers on this list confirm this strange observation? "I been" or
"he gone" do occur in dialectal English, but this is usually the
result of auxiliary-verb suppression ("HAVE dropping"), not of
paradigmatic levelling.
Took and went are preterits, and not past participles (these are taken
and gone).
Many people say 'I seen' instead of 'I saw/have seen'. It's regarded
as an illiteracy.
'I be', she be, they be' etc. instead of 'I am, she is, they are' is
colloquial. How are you? I be fine.
'Have-dropping' is not a feature of my speech; I do, however,
frequently hypercontract 'have' to an epenthic schwa with modals:
woulda coulda shoulda etc, with the same schwa also hypercontracting
'to' in near-modals like usta and supposta. I get into arguments when
I say 'gotta' (in the sense 'must') has also developed into a modal.
Were it not for the strong verbs and their distinct past participles,
I suspect the majority of native English speakers would deny the
existance of past participles. They are not intuitive.