pencil. Similarly, the preterite of /to blow/ may be either /blowed/ or /blew/, and that of /to drink/ oscillates between /drank/ and /drunk/, and that of /to fall/ is still usually /fell/, though /fallen/ has appeared, and that of /to shake/ may be either /shaken/ or /shuck/. The conjugation of /to win/ is yet far from fixed. The correct English preterite, /won/, is still in use, but against it are arrayed /wan/ and /winned/. /Wan/ seems to show some kinship, by ignorant analogy, with /ran/ and /began/. It is often used as the perfect participle, as in "I have /wan/ $4." The misuse of the perfect participle for the preterite, now almost the invariable rule in vulgar American, is common to many other dialects of English, and seems to be a symptom of a general decay of the perfect tenses. That decay has been going on for a long time, and in American, the most vigorous and advanced of all the dialects of the language, it is particularly well marked. Even in the most pretentious written American it shows itself. The English, in their writing, still use the future perfect, albeit somewhat laboriously and self-consciously, but in America it has virtually disappeared: one often reads whole books without encountering a single example of it. Even the present perfect and the past perfect seem to be instinctively avoided. The Englishman says "I /have/ dined," but the American says "I /am through/ dinner"; the Englishman says "I /had/ slept," but the American often says "I /was done/ sleeping." Thus the perfect tenses are forsaken for the simple present and the past. In the vulgate a further step is taken, and "I /have been/ there" becomes "I /been/ there." Even in such phrases as "he /hasn't/ been here," /ain't/ (=/am not/) is commonly substituted for /have not/, thus giving the present perfect a flavor of the simple present. The step from "I /have taken/" to "/I taken/" was therefore neither difficult nor unnatural, and once it had been made the resulting locution was supported by the greater [Pg205] apparent regularity of its verb. Moreover, this perfect participle, thus put in place of the preterite, was further reinforced by the fact that it was the adjectival form of the verb, and hence collaterally familiar. Finally, it was also the authentic preterite in the passive voice, and although this influence, in view of the decay of the passive, may not have been of much consequence, nevertheless it is not to be dismissed as of no consequence at all.