Growing up in a Black family in the US, I frequently heard people have conversations like this:
Mom: Have you eaten yet?
Kid: Yeah, Mom, I been done ate.
Wife: Have you fixed the sink yet?
Husband: Woman, I been done fixed it.
(Emphasis is on the word "been")
The meaning has always been the same: not only have I done it, I did it some time ago. This led me to believe that it might be an actual tense in use in more than one language, and in more than one dialect of English.
Am I right about that? What is the tense called? Are there other such tenses in use in parts of the English-speaking world that I might not have heard of?
I forgot to add that I found an article online, called "Notes on African American English". I disagree with parts of it, but section 5.2.2 seems about right:
5.2.2 Also found in AAE (and some other varieties of English) is an
uninflected done for a resultant
state: I done ate (I've already
eaten), I had done ate (I'd already
eaten). For some speakers, this can be
combined with the uninflected be and
been: I been done ate (I finished
eating some time ago), I be done ate
(I've usually already eaten).
Best Answer
In Wikipedia and this article by Joan Fickett, it makes the distinction between recent past and pre-recent past:
Recent:
Pre-recent:
Edit: Still trying to figure out the name for the "been done" + verb tense, which is yet another tense/aspect that doesn't exist in Standard English.