grammaticality - Why is the phrase "should have went" so widely used?


Rarely do we hear "should have gone" in common speech.


Some background: My father immigrated to the US in the late 60s. He learned English first overseas, British English. Then he studied extensively in America.


He always corrected me and my brothers on us saying "you/I/they should have went". And after the 2,762nd time, finally I say "should have gone"


The reason I think it's a valid question is that go/gone/went are pretty ABC words. My guess is that the contraction "should've" is partly to blame - i.e. we speak so fast that we pick the more natural-sounding thing.



Answer



That is confusion of the past tense with the past participle, and it's unfortunately really common in the US.


My guess it's because the speaker is interpreting "should have" as a particle indicating expedience and trying to combine it with the past indicative.


It should instead be that "should" is that particle, and "have" forms the perfect aspect. You always want the perfect aspect in this case because if you "should have done something" it's because it would have had some effect on the present. The perfect aspect indicates a causal relationship.


Also, for most verbs the past participle and past tense are homonyms, so the error rarely allows itself to be corrected.


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