Revisiting the continuing forms of the perfect tenses

WE made a full-dress review of the perfect tenses in the past five columns. To round off the review, we will now revisit the progressive perfect tenses. Recall that as the continuing forms of the three perfect tenses, the progressive perfect tenses denote actions that are repeated over a period of time in the past, that are continuing in the present, or that will continue in the future.

The “perfected” or completed aspect of the progressive perfect tenses is a repeated action that begins before another action, that is in progress during another action, or that continues after another time or action. To evoke the progressive perfect tenses, the suffix “-ing” is added to the base form of the main verb, which is then paired off with a form of the auxiliary verb “have” and the perfect participle of the verb “be.” This tense has this form: Subject + (has/had/have) + (been) + (base verb form + ing).