I remember about a month ago I was speaking to a friend and I said a Present Perfect sentence like "I have [VERB]". I forget the verb but I remember it was an everyday verb, not something exotic. But to my shock and horror, I have used not the participle form of the verb, but the past one, and it sounded more correct than using the past participle. (This was a verb whose participle form was different than its past form.)
Could this be? Can you think of any verb for which this may be true?
Best Answer
In every language, there is a tendency towards regularization, that is, irregular forms tend to become regular over time. In particular, this has been happening to the English language for the last 13 centuries. Here are some examples of Old English irregular verbs that became regular in Modern English1:
Although we can't possibly know what verb you used in that utterance, I would guess you used some irregular verb that is in the process of regularizing. So, using the verb form ending in -ed sounds more natural to you. It seems that this is happening to prove, for instance. According to the Wikipedia, "In BrE, the past participle proved is strongly preferred to proven."