What is 'perfective done'?

“Excuse me. What is this in my oatmeal?” …

“Frances, Begonia done found your good dentures.”

This bit of dialogue is from a 1991 episode of the comedy sketch show In Living Color, written by Keenan Ivory Wayans. The scene is a diner, and the circumstance is this: a customer has found dentures in his bowl of oatmeal, and a waitress has identified those dentures as belonging to her coworker, Frances. Oops.

But what interests us here is the word done. In “Begonia done found your good dentures,” done is combining with the verb found to communicate and emphasize the idea that the action described—the finding of the good dentures—has ended or is complete. It also expresses some wholly justified surprise.

This use of done is a feature of African American English known as perfective done. It’s different from the done in “I have done my chores,” which features done being used to mean “to perform an action or activity.” Perfective done typically pairs up with a verb in its past tense form to make it clear that the action or state being described is over or complete. The terms preverbal done, unstressed done, and dən are also used to refer to this linguistic feature, the last two using names that highlight the fact that done is unstressed—that is, not emphasized—in the sentence.

Perfective done is one of the many language features that linguists (people who study human language) catalog and study. Although you likely won’t learn about it in English class, perfective done is grammatical; it follows particular patterns and rules, and it has a particular function in this language variety.

Here are some additional examples:

I done learned my mistake and learned to do what’s right by it. — August Wilson, Fences, 1985

I don’t know what happened either, y’all, but it done happened. What was once the name of a character from the TV show Friends has now morphed into the name of a new medicine for restless-leg syndrome. This is all to say that my name is spelled P-H-O-E-B-E, and you’ll probably forget that in five minutes, but I love you anyway. — Phoebe Robinson, You Can’t Touch My Hair, 2016

“…you know these folks done paid their money, and you know they want to hear ‘Little Red Corvette.’ You know they want to hear ‘Delirious.’ You know they want to hear ‘Purple Rain,’ ‘1999,’ everything else. But you come out and play what you want to play at that particular stage in your life, and for your true core fans, they don't ever leave disappointed. — Tavis Smiley, interview with Prince, PBS, 7 June 2005

In all of these, we can replace the done with have to get a grammatical pattern that’s very much like what’s taught in the typical English class:

I have learned …

I don’t know what happened either, y’all, but it has happened. …

“… you know these folks have paid their money …”

This have + past tense verb construction is called the present perfect. It’s a verb tense that is used to refer to an action that began in the past and is completed at the time of speaking (as in “I have finished”) or is continuing in the present (as in “I have lived here for a year”).

But linguists who study perfective done have found that perfective done communicates something more than what is communicated in the present perfect, specifically surprise, disbelief, or another strong emotion, as we can see clearly in this example:

“You ain’t just cooked your goose; you done cremated it, my man!” — Mary Monroe, One House Over, 2018

Digging Deeper into the Linguistics of Perfective Done

Perfective done also functions very much like present perfect have when it’s used with adverbs of time:

I done already cleaned that. = I done cleaned that already. = I have already cleaned that. = I have cleaned that already.

I done watched that movie before. = I have watched that movie before. (Note that just as it’s not grammatical to say “I have before watched the movie,” it is also not grammatical to say “I done before watched the movie.”)

Variation in the Use of Perfective Done

It’s important to note that African American English is spoken by millions of people and there is variation in how it’s used.

For some speakers of AAE, perfective done can be used with phrases about time in a way that does not indicate completion. Linguist Lisa Green uses the following example to demonstrate this special context:

“I dən wanted to do that for five years.” (This is glossed as “I have wanted to do that for five years.”)

“I can’t believe that dance class is canceled after I dən wanted to take dance for five years.”

The action expressed in these examples—wanting to do something for five years—is not complete; instead perfective done is used solely to express surprise or disbelief.

Negation with perfective done can also vary. Some speakers place the words ain’t or didn’t in front of done to create negation. So:

We done found the answer.

when negated can become

We ain’t done found the answer.

or

We didn’t done found the answer.

Other speakers omit the done altogether, and replace it with ain’t to create negation. In these cases, the verb in its present tense form is also acceptable.

We ain’t find the answer.

or

We ain’t found the answer.

Sources:

Bernard Comrie, Aspect: An Introduction to the Study of Verbal Aspect and Related Problems, (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

Lisa J. Green, African American English: A Linguistic Introduction, (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 34-70.

Alysia Nicole Harris, The Non-Aspectual Meaning of African American English ‘Aspectual’ Markers, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019).

Tyler Kendall, Jason McLarty, and Charlie Farrington, “AAL Linguistic Patterns”](https://oraal.uoregon.edu/AAL/Linguistic-Patterns), Online Resources for African American Language Project (Eugene, Oregon: University of Oregon, 2020).

Sonja L. Lanehart, The Oxford Handbook of African American Language, (United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 2015).

Katie Martin, 2018. Perfective done. Yale Grammatical Diversity Project: English in North America. (Available online at http://ygdp.yale.edu/phenomena/perfective-done. Accessed on 2023-05-02).

J. Michael Terry, “Variation in the Interpretation and Use of the African American English Preverbal Done Construction,” American Speech Vol. 85 Issue 1 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).