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The usage here implies that the action is habitual, not continuous, nor final, e.g. "Every time I tell the story, I forget the name". She could have said "I hav
by nescioquid 5y ago
The usage here implies that the action is habitual, not continuous, nor final, e.g. "Every time I tell the story, I forget the name". She could have said "I have forgotten", but that implies a finality the writer wants to exclude. If her habitual forgetting was confined to the past, she might have written "I used to forget...".
I think everything you've said is correct; I just wanted to add the idea of an habitual aspect.
EDIT: found a reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_markers_of_habitual_aspect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_markers_of_habitual_as...
- da_chicken 5y agoYeah, habitual tense is very subtle in most forms of English. The meme-famous Oscar Gable quote, "They don’t think it be like it is, but it do," is an example where some vernacular forms of English emphasize it more. Here, "be" is the habitual tense of "to be." It's not "bad" English. It's a tense you're not recognizing.