Thanks again to everyone who took the survey. The response was great, exceeding my targets. Also thanks a lot for the feedback. Everyone who pointed out that they would use contractions, that was actually sort of what I was getting at.
The survey was about the use of the present perfect (I have read that book) and the past simple (I read that book). In standard British English, the present perfect is used for actions that are completed but not fixed in time (so, "I have read that book" is different from "I read that book in 2011") and actions or states that began in the past but are ongoing at the point of speaking (often expressed with for or since, as in "I have lived in England for five years/since 2008"). The second usage often contains adverbs of frequency (ever, never, yet, always).
Based on this, every scenario in the survey requires the use of the present perfect.
It is a pervasive belief in British ELT (English Language Teaching) that the present perfect is less commonly used in American English, and I have actually had teachers tell me that it's not used in AmEng at all. I've always argued this point because clearly (I thought) it's false. But people are
so adamant that I began to wonder whether my memories had been influenced by years of living in the UK and teaching from British grammar books and textbooks. Hence the survey. I suppose I should also mention that I'm writing a paper on teaching the present perfect, lest you think I'm just a random nut job
.
My theory is that the present perfect is used in the US in just the same way and just as commonly (or at least almost as commonly) as in the UK, and that much of the ambiguity surrounding it comes from the fact that in spoken language the auxiliary (have/has) is nearly always contracted. This contraction creates a phonetic "weak form," meaning a sound that is almost swallowed by the speaker. In the sentence "I've read that book" the "I've" is often pronounced /əv/ and the /v/ can even sound like a faint /f/. The upside of all this is that contracted auxiliaries in the present perfect are so poorly enunciated that they may be omitted altogether. This is definitely true for learners of English, but I think also of native speakers. It's the same phenomenon that produces "should of" and "could of" instead of "should've" and "could've". The pronunciation is identical: /ʃʊdəv/ and /kʊdəv/. People write what they hear. I wanted this survey to mark explicitly the difference between the two forms, and that is why I didn't use contractions.
At the moment I'm working on analysing the survey data and on writing my paper, so it may be a while before I have a full analysis, but initially it looks like my theory was mostly correct. There is no significant difference between the British and American speakers who responded to the survey. Obviously this is not comprehensive or scientifically rigourous, but I believe that at least it calls into question the BritELT assertions. So, hurrah for internet-based pseudoscience!
If anyone is still conscious and interested after that wall of text, I can make the survey results available online once I'm done with them. Let me know if there's interest
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