Re: "have him have to"
- From: Robert Bannister <robban@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2006 08:13:51 +0800
Andrew Usher wrote:
Confusion of the past tense and past participle is really old in
English - gammarians of the 18c. complained about it. One might predict
that the two will eventually merge (except for 'to be'); but the
influence of educated and written English might prevent this from
occurring entirely.
This tends, I have noticed, to be the simple past replacing the
participle, except in the i/a/u class where the participle prevails.
'Spun' has completely replaced 'span' in AmE, for example.
In addition, there are a number of verbs whose past participles are very rarely used. "Lain" is one: one might possibly write "These bones have lain here for centuries", but in normal speech, the continuous seems to prevail: "Your clothes have been lying there since last week." When verb forms are not in common use, many people simply forget them or even that they exist.
--
Rob Bannister
.
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