Timeline for Can the continuous form be combined with the passive voice?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jan 22, 2017 at 1:30 | comment | added | A.Cool | @ohwilleke - I really appreciate your help! But I agree with StoneyB, I'm looking for trustful contents, I know if we were going to set the examples above in a degree of never used, sometimes used, always used.. of course it would be set at never used, however the fact it isn't idiomatic doesn't mean it is not grammatical, if we were going to follow this aspect, then "your" meaning "you're" would be totally acceptable in a Cambridge Exam, since many natives don't know what the differences are. Therefore, I'm looking for a grammatical content, and what Stoney provided me seems great | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 23:43 | comment | added | ohwilleke | If you take a descriptive rather than a prescriptive approach to grammar, the operational definition of incorrect is that it is very rarely used. | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 23:42 | comment | added | StoneyB on hiatus | @ohwilleke We don't fail to use them because they're ungrammatical; we fail to use them because the occasions on which they're appropriate are very very rare. | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 23:40 | comment | added | StoneyB on hiatus | @ohwilleke ". . . visitors have been being undercharged for years." --The Galapagos: A Natural History, 2014. "I didn't get any kind of look at all at whoever was driving, and I didn't see if there was a passenger, either.” “So Kayla Anson could have been driving. Or she could have been being driven." --Skeleton Key, 2001. They're very rare (I said as much, twice), and it's absurd that learners should be called upon to master them; but rarity ≠ ungrammaticality. | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 23:12 | comment | added | ohwilleke | Most of the Google ngram examples are language texts explaining that native speakers of English don't use this construction. books.google.com/ngrams/… | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 23:09 | comment | added | ohwilleke | @StoneyB Where? None of those sentences are ever spoken by native speaker of English, even children. The construction "been being" is not used in standard American English, although "be being" is sometimes used. Peter Anthony Masters in "Systems in English Grammar"(1996) states "since the sound of been being in the perfect continuous tenses is generally an unpleasant one to the native ear, these structures are very seldom used." Vincent Ooi in Computer Corpus Lexicography (1988) at p. 65, found it only twice in a 12 billion word corpus (both in Dept. of Energy pubs where ESL for many authors). | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 22:53 | comment | added | StoneyB on hiatus | @ohwilleke I hold no brief for their grace, but these constructions have been grammatically acceptable for 150 years (basically within 60 years of the introduction of the passive progressive at the end of the 18th century), and they are necessary in contexts where a continuative perfect must be carefully distinguished from a resultative or experiential perfect. | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 22:28 | comment | added | ohwilleke | The following are grammatically incorrect: "In 2007 he had been being treated for imbecility for ten years and had not yet recovered his wits.", "By then he will have been being treated for imbecility for twenty years." And "He has been being treated for imbecility for almost twenty years and has not yet recovered his wits.", is so poor as a matter of style that it verged on being incorrect and non-idiomatic. "He will be being treated for imbecility on Monday when you arrive, and may not be able to greet you.", is not only defensible construction of the four in the answer. | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 17:21 | comment | added | Edwin Ashworth | @Tushar Raj I'm not sure that that's the optimal way to learn basic English, especially if the only tuition available does the opposite. Certainly they should be aware of the caveats made here. | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 15:38 | comment | added | Tushar Raj | I agree with tchrist and advise @Haseo to refer to resources that teach descriptive, not prescriptive, grammar | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 15:32 | comment | added | StoneyB on hiatus | @tchrist I'd go further and call your hunch an established fact. But I wish ESL texts would stop issuing phoney 'rules' (like the n-conditionals) and treat their students like rational human beings either by a) characterizing these rules as pedagogical makeshifts, b) stating the actual rules in all their complexity, or c) ignoring the fringe constructions and leaving their students to figure them out when they encounter them every two or three hundred thousand pages. | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 15:30 | vote | accept | A.Cool | ||
| Jan 21, 2017 at 15:26 | vote | accept | A.Cool | ||
| Jan 21, 2017 at 15:30 | |||||
| Jan 21, 2017 at 15:26 | comment | added | A.Cool | Thank you. I really find it very unecessary to use the passive voice with these tenses, but I got very confuse to see that explanation in that site, thank you for getting my question clear :) | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 15:25 | comment | added | tchrist♦ | I have a hunch—almost a formal conjecture even—that materials targeting English Language Learners will often issue short and simple commandments about what to do or not to do using sloppily broad brushstrokes that hide legitimate but uncommon uses like these because the authors are trying to break a particular usage error commonly made by EFL learners which simple “rules” like these stop them from making. Here I think they’re trying to break the pattern seen in learners of using the continuous aspect in places native speakers find unnatural in the general case albeit possible in nuanced ones. | |
| Jan 21, 2017 at 15:12 | history | answered | StoneyB on hiatus | CC BY-SA 3.0 |