>> The phenomenon I meant is the overuse of the present perfect tense.
I have fairly recently added the present perfect, which seemed more obvious and easier to understand than the past perfect, but now I am seeing that the present perfect is also being deprived of meaning by overuse the wrong way.
The bedrock issue here is that after several generations of not including the perfect tenses in the grammar instruction that used to be standard, there is no one left to teach it. If the child doesn't learn it in school because the NCTE decided to stop teaching it, and the child does not hear it at the family dinner table because the parents were not taught it and their parents were not taught it, it disappears. The past perfect is a useful device that makes a difference in meaning and the present perfect is also a useful device that makes a difference in meaning. Are we to allow our language, by which we convey meaning to one another, to be diminished because of a fiat issued by a governing body for reasons of its own, which may have had little to do with enhanced or diminished ability to communicate?
Did I write those sentences? Whew. It is written that the average American does not understand sentences of more than 13 words, so the paragraph above, composed of four sentences averaging 36 words each, is a loser on the face of it, as is this sentence of 44 words.
>> Re the dinner table language: I didn't mean to avoid the question. I thought you were sharing a question you've asked of others, with some interesting examples. My parents spoke only English. How about yours?
Mine spoke American English. Did yours speak American English or English English?
.brad.23octo10.