- Hello, grammarians. Previously I had covered
three of the basic aspects of English and that's simple,
perfect and progressive. And so there's just one
more and it's a combination of the last two and it's
called the perfect progressive. And to recap what those two things do, is what the perfect does is
it denotes something that is complete and the progressive notes something that has been ongoing. And it seems like those
two things together don't make a whole lot of sense
but I promise that they do. You can use the perfect
progressive aspect to say that you've been doing
something for a long time, or you will have done
something for a long time, or that you had been doing
something continuously in the past and now it's stopped. So let me explain how the perfect progressive is constructed. You take the verb "to have"
and then you combine it with the word "been," and then
the verb in question, and then the ending "ing". So, as with all of our aspects,
the only part that changes is this "have" stuff. This is the only word that
changes depending on which tense you situate it in. So in the past you would say, "I had." "I had been eating cookies." In the present you would say,
"I have been eating cookies." In the future you can say, "I will have been eating cookies." So you can use the
perfect progressive aspect in a couple of different ways. You can say that something
had been ongoing in the past and is now done, you
can say that it's been ongoing in the past and
is still happening now, you know, "I have been eating
cookies all morning and "I have no intent to stop." Or you can use the perfect
progressive to say how long something has been going on. So you can say, "I will
have been eating cookies for "40 years come next Thursday
and I have no regrets." You know, you can say how
long something has been going on using this aspect. But you get the idea, so
the perfect progressive is formed by combining "have"
and have is the part that changes, I had been, I have
been, I will have been, with been and the verb in question with an "ing" ending. You can learn anything, David out.