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[–] 2 points 10 months ago

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:

  • 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.

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