Page:The American Language.djvu/220

204 various other uncertainties and confusions. The preterite of to hear is heerd; the perfect may be either heerd or heern. That of to do may be either done or did, with the latter apparently pre- vailing; that of to draw is drew if the verb indicates to attract or to abstract and drawed if it indicates to draw with a pencil. Similarly, the preterite of to blow may be either Wowed or blew, and that of to drink oscillates between drank and drunk, and that of to fall is still usually fell, though fallen has appeared, and that of to shake may be either shaken or shuck. The conju- gation of to win is yet far from fixed. The correct English preterite, won, is still in use, but against it are arrayed wan and winned. Wan seems to show some kinship, by ignorant analogy, with ran and began. It is often used as the perfect participle, as in "I have wan $4."

The misuse of the perfect participle for the preterite, now almost the invariable rule in vulgar American, is common to many other dialects of English, and seems to be a symptom of a general decay of the perfect tenses. That decay has been going on for a long time, and in American, the most vigorous and advanced of all the dialects of the language, it is particularly well marked. Even in the most pretentious written American it shows itself. The English, in their writing, still use the future perfect, albeit somewhat laboriously and self-consciously, but in America it has virtually disappeared: one often reads whole books without encountering a single example of it. Even the present perfect and the past perfect seem to be instinctively avoided. The Englishman says "I have dined," but the American says "I am through dinner"; the Englishman says "I had slept," but the American often says "I was done sleeping." Thus the perfect tenses are forsaken for the simple present and the past. In the vulgate a further step is taken, and "I have been there" becomes "I been there." Even in such phrases as "he hasn't been here," ain't (=am not) is commonly substituted for have not, thus giving the present perfect a flavor of the simple present. The step from "I have taken" to "I taken" was therefore neither difficult nor unnatural, and once it had been made the resulting locution was supported by the greater