Perfect forms of verbs are redundant: Simple past tense doesn’t have an auxiliary verb anyway so you can already differentiate it from perfect or passive cases when you use it with have or be respectively.
Easier to learn one variation of each verb than two
PRO-PERFECT FORM:
Redundancy in language is good, losing one part of a sentence due to noise, signal loss or damage to medium may be saved by a redundant part making communication more reliable.
but also:
regular verbs already have identical simple and perfect forms
which kind of tips the scales I think. perfect forms are already inconsistent, and verbs with identical forms already prove there’s no significant loss in not having a distinct perfect form. I was gonna add “can be used alone and carry its own meaning (eg drunk)” as a bullet point in favor of perfect forms but regular verbs with no distinct perfect form can also be used alone and still carry the meaning (eg beloved)
so yeah I think distinct perfect forms are on their way out, long term.
Yeah I mostly learned English watching Cartoon Network, when it wasn’t with subtitles or dubbed. They basically started airing in the Netherlands and an entire generation learned English by watching cartoons after school.
This is now repeating with YouTube and teens watching a lot of English youtubers.
I miss those days, Dexter’s laboratory, Dragonball Z, two stupid dogs…
A lot of people have started using simple past tense for all perfect tenses lately, but I don’t like change, dangit.
i can make arguments for both cases;
PRO-SIMPLE FORM:
Perfect forms of verbs are redundant: Simple past tense doesn’t have an auxiliary verb anyway so you can already differentiate it from perfect or passive cases when you use it with have or be respectively.
Easier to learn one variation of each verb than two
PRO-PERFECT FORM:
but also:
which kind of tips the scales I think. perfect forms are already inconsistent, and verbs with identical forms already prove there’s no significant loss in not having a distinct perfect form. I was gonna add “can be used alone and carry its own meaning (eg drunk)” as a bullet point in favor of perfect forms but regular verbs with no distinct perfect form can also be used alone and still carry the meaning (eg beloved)
so yeah I think distinct perfect forms are on their way out, long term.
Yeah I mostly learned English watching Cartoon Network, when it wasn’t with subtitles or dubbed. They basically started airing in the Netherlands and an entire generation learned English by watching cartoons after school.
This is now repeating with YouTube and teens watching a lot of English youtubers.
I miss those days, Dexter’s laboratory, Dragonball Z, two stupid dogs…
Beam me up Scotty!