American dialects: Replacing the past-perfect participle with the simple-past form

Question

I have come across some American media (The Alternate History Hub youtube channel comes to mind) in which the perfect participle and the simple-past form have been merged.

For example, we would have:

"We've driven there before" -> "We've drove there before"
"I would've sunk" -> "I would've sank"
"I've swum that distance before" -> "I've swam that distance before"

As far as I can tell, the replacement of the perfect with the simple past is consistent in this dialect, rather than just applying to some verbs (Edit in response to commment: with perhaps the exception of "to be" - "I have was ill" sounds odd enough that it would have really stood out).

Is this a feature of some American dialects? If so then in which? How common is this feature?

Related question (@sumelic): Is the past participle becoming obsolete? (I have went)

Zeal · Accepted Answer

This is common in parts of Mississippi, Alabama, and Kentucky that I'm aware of. It's not exactly a regional dialect, as it's restricted to small towns, neighborhoods, or even individual families rather than an identifiable socio-geographical region. My theory is that this sort of dying-off of distinct word forms through replacement happens when speakers do not perceive any negative social pressure from peers regarding their lazy word usage. Usually this requires limited diversity in social interaction, which explains its persistence in rural and isolated areas. It's also possible with a particularly self-assured or easy-going culture. For instance:

Don't let nobody make ya feel less fer usin' yer words. If yer
  meaning's took, it don't make no never-mind.

To be clear, it is totally fine to speak this way in America. Anyone would understand, and most would not be surprised. The most common supposition people may make when hearing someone speak this way is that the speaker did not participate in formal education, but I've heard some of these idiosyncrasies persist in the speech of college graduates. Breaking a habit requires significant internal pressure.

Aaron C · Answer

This is happening in many places.  I live in Southern California (LA metro area), and I hear it all the time.  I work in a law office, and I hear licensed attorneys do it occasionally without blinking an eye.  One day I even heard two attorneys say "saw" instead of "seen", as in "I've never saw that before".  Those attorneys were born and raised in the Los Angeles metro area and had college-educated, English-speaking parents.  (I am originally from northern Missouri, and I did not hear this from educated speakers while growing up.)
"drove" instead of "driven", "went" instead of "gone", "broke" instead of "broken", "ran" instead of "run" - that's just a small list of what I hear on a regular basis even from educated speakers in Los Angeles. If I see this error in a foreign language dub, I know the translator is from California.  It's also very common to find the simple-past substitution in online forums and comments sections if you look for it, although it's obviously harder to pinpoint the contributor's region.
I believe that this is an inevitable change in the language that we can watch in real time as it occurs.  The rule is easily internalized as it follows the regular verbs' pattern of using the same form for both the simple past and the past participle.  As far as I can tell, American schools don't teach the formal conjugations of English verbs and tense/aspect combinations, so there isn't really a institution working to preserve those irregular past participles in the language.

user58319 · Answer

As quite a few native speakers of English do not have to care about the fact that – in other languages – adjectives and past participles agree with nouns, they are not too good (or, shall we say... helpless!) at grammatical analysis!
They only need to worry about agreement between verb and subject, and even this proves a bit tricky for a lot of them in cases where the subject is not the word immediately before the verb, or – in a question – after the auxiliary verb.

French: Aucun de mes amis n'a de voiture. = English: None of my friends has/have (?) a car.

The verb 'have' should agree with 'none', singular (like 'every one of my friends'), not with 'my friends', plural.
Now, to the point: with regular verbs – and quite a few irregular verbs as well (think/thought/thought, meet/met/met, win/won/won, etc.) – the past simple is no different from the past participle; so, when you form the perfect tenses (have/has thought, had thought, will have thought, would have thought) it is NOT OBVIOUS that you are using the past participle of a verb and not its past simple, if you do not know or care about the difference! To some, learning the past simple of irregular verbs must seem work enough, so they let their past participle alone!

American dialects: Replacing the past-perfect participle with the simple-past form

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