"She left" vs. "She's left"

Hello,

The other day at work my boss asked me if a colleague was still in the building (it was 4pm), and I replied,

"She left."

to which my boss (American-born native speaker) echoed, with a slight correction,

"She's left?"

I thought I'd made a mistake and confirmed "Yes, she's left."

Was it really a mistake? I live in the USA.

Hmm, really? I'm an American native speaker as well and "she's left" sounds a little odd to me, though I don't think it's incorrect. I would typically either say "she left" or "she's gone". In any case, I see nothing wrong with "she left". Perhaps his echo wasn't really intended to be a correction, and was simply expressing surprise that she was gone?

- Kef

Yeah, it probably wasn't a correction.

I definitely agree with furrykef here. "She left" is perfectly fine North American English, whereas "she's left" sounds a bit off as a statement rather than a question. I myself also think that your boss wasn't correcting you but rather just reacting to your statement that your colleague had already left.

I speak British English, and traditionally, 'She's left' would be right. However the influence of American TV and film is huge, and as such now I could quite possibly find myself answering 'She left' to that question. I don't know whether your boss was simply reacting, or correcting, but it shows that even in the US, this usage has not completely established itself. I believe that the shift in American English, from the tendency to use the present perfect to the tendency to use the past simple in certain constructions is very recent, perhaps dating back thirty years or so. Therefore it seems that American English has made this shift, but it hasn't made it completely, so that there is still a certain amount of 'confusion' as to what is the appropriate tense. No doubt different areas of the U.S. say different things as well. Am I correct in thinking New York English loves the simple past more than say Californian or Texan English?

The matter is that this is not an complete unambiguous shift in NAE but more just a tendency to favor the preterite over the present perfect for statements of fact in isolation. Also note that I really do not know of any significant regional variation in the favoring of the preterite over the present perfect. I really do not think that New York English, to use your example, really significantly favors the preterite greater than, say, Californian or Texan English.

One note, though, is that many dialects (such as that here) do not actually conflate the preterite with the present perfect but merely determine the line between statements of fact and things relating to the present differently from, say, English English. For instance, while "she left" would be preferred over "she's left", such a preference is negated, for instance, by adding an adverbial form that connects the statement with the present; "she's already left" is just as preferred as "she already left" even though the former sounds more connected to that being discussed while the latter sounds more matter-of-fact.