Help with verbs following 'hasn't'

Question

I know that the verb following has or have must be in past participle. But why did Google say that the following sentence is correct: "He hasn't texted me in 2 days."

Can someone explain to me why it's correct or incorrect?

Ex 1: He hasn't run home. or He hasn't ran home.
Ex 2: He hasn't tell me anything. or he hasn't told me anything.
Ex 3: She hasn't come home in 2 days. or she hasn't came home in 2 days.

Why is it that the past particle of "tell" is "told" and the past participle of "come" is "come"? Shouldn't the past participle of "come" be "came"?

It is but that doesnt explain why the past particle of Come isnt came, — ESL I need help, Mar 31 '16 at 18:48
There is no real "explaining" to do. The simple past is 'came'; the past participle is 'come'. Sometimes verbs have "irregular" past participles. They don't have to follow a pattern. — Alan Carmack, Mar 31 '16 at 18:51
I googled the past participle of Come and its not came. The past tense of Come is Came. But not the past participle. — ESL I need help, Mar 31 '16 at 18:53
@AlanCarmack does that mean that i have to go learn irregular verbs? — ESL I need help, Mar 31 '16 at 18:56
If there were any way of predicting irregular verbs, we wouldn't call them irregular. — choster, Mar 31 '16 at 19:00

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 31 '16 at 18:59

Text is a regular verb. For all regular verbs, the past tense and past participle are the same. You form both by adding -ed to the base (sometimes with consonant doubling in the spelling).

Come, run, and tell are irregular verbs, so you can't just add -ed. For some irregular verbs, like tell, the past tense and past participle are the same, so you only have to memorize one form. For others, like come and run, the two forms are different, and you have to memorize both separately.

  past tense    past participle
  -----------   ----------------
  texted        texted　　　　　　←　Regular, so both forms are the same
  told          told  　　　　　　←　Irregular, but both forms are the same
  ran           run   　　　　　　←　Irregular, and the two forms are different
  came          come  　　　　　　←　Irregular, and the two forms are different

To form a perfect construction, use the perfect auxiliary have followed by the past participle form of the verb:

He hasn't run home.

He hasn't come home in two days.

He hasn't told me anything.

He hasn't texted me in two days.

You'll just have to memorize the past participle form for irregular verbs.

In addition, there are some which are the same for all: set set set; cut cut cut; put put put; etc — Cascabel_StandWithUkraine_, Mar 31 '16 at 19:23
@ESLIneedhelp, here is a useful list of irregular verbs. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/605/ — JavaLatte, Mar 31 '16 at 20:20
I wish I could up-vote three times, once for a great answer, a second time for finding a way to make the <pre> formatting useful on ELL, and a third time for getting those arrows in there without using an HTML escape code :) — ColleenV, Mar 31 '16 at 21:05

Alan Carmack · Answer 2 · 2016-03-31T19:13:10.343

The simple past and the past participle of tell is told.

Not all verbs work like this. Many verbs have three forms (swim, swam, swum). Some verbs have two forms for both the simple past and the past participle (dream, dreamed or dreamt, dreamed or dreamt). Some verbs have two participle forms: (light, lit, lit or lighted). Note that over time, forms change and/or one form may be used more than the other (lighted used to be a widely used simple past form). There can be differences between dialects also, and between American English and British English, or between North American usage and British usage.

As far as come, came, come, I have no idea why the past participle is come and not came. But there are others like this: run, ran, run.

There may be historical reasons; what's important is to look a word up in a good dictionary and just accept whatever it gives you for the past and past participle.

Help with verbs following 'hasn't'

2 Answers2