Jason F. answered • 04/21/19
Latin / Greek / European History
The answer, we didn't always take the participle:
preserve, conserve fr. servo
assist, consist, desist fr. sisto
solve, absolve fr. solvo
...and many more.
In some cases, it may appear that English has borrowed the perfect participle, but it actually borrowed the gerund as a noun, and then turned that noun into a verb: so the English verb act from the English noun act from the Latin gerund actum.
Finally, in many cases, where English has borrowed the perfect participle, it's done so under the influence of French (English disperse fr. Latin dispergo by way of French disperser). French underwent a series of sound changes and verb form mergers during its history, which are too complicated to write about here (and anyway, not my expertise :-p)
