Present perfect continuous tense

[spelling]

Hi there,

I printed all the tenses info from www.englishpage.com. I am really trying to learn the tenses, but find it very confusing.  I read the following in a newspaper:

Vreken, who  has been described by family members as a man who approaced life with a positive attitude, was killed on Saturday while out on his morning jog.

Now, according to the englishpage site, 'has been' is a present perfect continuous tense and must be used with the present participle - ing.  It must be used when speaking of something that started in the past and has continued up untill now. Or it must be used with 'recently and lately.'  In this sentence I do not see the -ing.  Also, it is something that his family said about him.  So it is a completed action? They did not start saying it and it continued up untill whenever?!?! Please help!

[Joe Carillo]

Your confusion is simply the result of a misunderstanding of the present perfect continuous tense. It’s true that this tense must be used with the present participle of the verb, which of course ends in “-ing,” as in “She has been singing the blues all day.” But “has been described,” the verb of the subordinate clause in the following sentence that you presented, isn’t in the present perfect continuous but in the passive form of the present perfect instead:

“Vreken, who has been described by family members as a man who approached life with a positive attitude, was killed on Saturday while out on his morning jog.”

The passive form of the present perfect is of the form “has been + past participle of the verb” (in this case “has been described”) in contrast to the passive form of the present perfect continuous, “has been + present participle of the verb” (as in the hypothetical sentence “Vreken’s family members have been describing him as a man who approached life with a positive attitude, but their neighbors knew that this wasn’t true at all.”). You can therefore see that it is the present perfect continuous that uses the “-ing” ending for its main verb (the present participle form); the present perfect, on the other hand, uses the “-ed” ending for its main verb (the past participle form).

In the sentence you presented, the passive present perfect form “has been described” indicates that the action of describing Vreken has already been perfected or completed. In contrast, in the hypothetical sentence I provided above, the passive present perfect continuous form “has been describing” indicates that that the action of describing Vreken started sometime in the recent past, continues up to the present, and may continue in the foreseeable future.

I hope this clarifies the difference between the present perfect tense and the present perfect continuous tense for you.

[spelling]

You know, in South Africa we have a saying that we use when completely confused, surprised or experiencing something weird or unexpected... EISH!!!! 

I will look up actives and passives and study your feedback.  But the English language...EISH!

Thank you!

[Joe Carillo]

You’re most welcome!

For a nonnative English speaker, learning English can indeed be exasperating at times, but the confusion should abate when you already have an adequate grasp of its grammar and lexicon. I must tell you, though, that the surprises in English—both the weird and the unexpected—never really end. I refer particularly to the English idioms and figures of speech, which often violate the very grammar and usage rules as well as the dictionary meanings of words that one has so painstakingly learned. There are thousands of those idioms and figures of speech in English (definitely much more than those of any of the world’s languages), and becoming conversant with lots of them is a must to acquire an adequate command of the language. So, along the way, expect to catch yourself involuntarily saying perhaps tens of thousands more “eishes!” This is what it would take to become truly proficient in English, but my advice to you is not to lose heart. Just keep on learning English until you can speak and write it like a native English speaker does. In a world where English is the global language, a good mastery of it should be worth all the effort.