TENSE TUESDAY: ACTIVE vs. PASSIVE PRESENT PERFECT CONTINUOUS

Good morning to all of you Daily Vitamin readers!

How's your day going? What are you doing right now, and for how long have you been doing this thing? In your answer you can use the Present Perfect Continuous. 

HAVE / HAS BEEN -ING

Example 1: I have been working since 9 AM. 

Today we are looking at the PASSIVE version of the Present Perfect Continuous. 

HAS BEEN BEING past participle

Example 2: The building has been being built for the last ten years.

Does that sound strange to you? That's because we rarely use the PASSIVE form of the Present Perfect Continuous. However, in this case it's very logical to use the passive: the building cannot build itself, right? When we do not know the agent (the thing completing the action) or don't want to emphasise it, then we use the PASSIVE. In sentence 2 the emphasis is on the action of building (or constructing) the building, not on who did it.

That's all for today. Thank you for reading!