I haven't caught her name, or I didn't catch her name?
Whereby, in which cases should a native use the first or the second form above?
Learn English – Which is the correct form
verb-forms
Related Solutions
Although there are many people that claim that "none" and "neither" should always take the singular form, it's always sounded odd to me, so I decided to dig into it a bit further.
For example, here is an Ngram of "none of us is" / "none of us are":
In this case, we can clearly see that "none of us are" - i.e. the supposedly "ungrammatical" form of the sentence was vastly more popular until roughly 1880. In 1880 or so "none of us is" began to take hold, and in the 1920s there was a steep decline in the use of "none of us are" - perhaps in response to overzealous copy editors enforcing the so called rule.
Most interesting is what's happened since the 1990s, where "none of us are" has shot back to prominence, leading to the fact that "none of us are" is now the dominant form again.
As suggested by snailplane, here's some interesting additional reading which seems to confirm my opinion that "none/neither should take the singular" is a wholly invented rule:
http://johnemcintyre.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/with-malice-toward-none.html
http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2009/01/08/none-is-none-are-grammar-according-to-clarkson/
As a native speaker, I've always just gone with choosing the verb as if "none" or "neither" was not taking part in the verb choice.
The sentences are too long. -> None of the sentences are too long
A or B is the correct answer -> Neither A nor B is the correct answer.
Base is a transitive verb: base something on something. The sentence is essentially equivalent to “Many companies base their judgement of students on their teachers' references”. Cast in the passive voice, this becomes (decidedly unidiomatically) “The judgement of students by many companies is based on their teachers' references”. We can expand this to “Many companies judge students in a certain way; that way is based on their teachers' references”. As this is rather clumsy, the sentence is condensed to “Many companies judge students based on their teachers' references”.
The past participle is used as an adjective. Its meaning is related to a the use of the past participle in the passive voice: it qualifies what is based (the judgement), not who is basing (the companies). Here is a slightly artificial sentence that illustrates the use of a participle phrase with a present participle, with an active meaning:
Many companies evaluate students, basing their judgment on their teachers' references.
Best Answer
"I haven't caught her name," implies that you haven't done so yet, but that might change in the future. Meanwhile, "I didn't catch her name" just states a condition, with no expectation or additional nuance.
Consider the following:
The use of the present perfect tense implies that you're not yet done fishing, and you might catch more. The use of the past tense simply states a fact, and nothing else. In the same way:
indicates an ongoing situation, where you might still catch a fish, while:
just says what happened. Of course I can follow up with a question, to ask if you're still fishing, or if you plan to catch more. But that information isn't in the statement itself.
To return to your question, a native speaker might say either "haven't caught", or "didn't catch". It depends on context. If you're not sure, then "didn't catch" is more generic and should fit with any context.