1217: Done Goofed etc. Apr 9, 2018

Sentences like "the boy done good" may sound not only non-standard but incorrect, but actually in some dialects of English it is acceptable and systematic. Moreover, the same sentence in Standard American English, "the boy did good" would also use the same verb with a follow up "...didn’t he?" when in fact these verbs serve two different purposes. In this sentence 'done' is a lexical verb (a.k.a. 'main verb' or 'full verb') while 'did is an auxiliary verb. Much like how a plural 'you' is considered standard, even though 'y'all' or 'yous' etc. would probably be easier to differentiate and understand, 'done' as a lexical verb is helpful for (in this case) disambiguation. This sort of idea was also explored with the use of 'hisself'.
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