about "have been"

[endeavor6636]

is there an active form or passive of "have been" , and which form does "have been" belong to?


is it " you have been late several times" passive form ? becasue it's talking about "what happens to the subject"; if it does, so what would be it's active form?

anybody explain

[RonBee]

I think you are talking about active or passive tense. "I have been working at it for an hour" is an example of active tense.

~R

[endeavor6636]

oh sorry, no i mean
for ex: " i have been to china" < no verb follow (have been)

[Humble]

Hi,
In I have been to China been is active, it's the Past Participle of be in the Present Perfect.
Now if we take
Over 370 people have been killed in Lebanon
been is an auxiliary in the Passive voice.
Bye

[rewboss]

I think you are talking about active or passive tense. "I have been working at it for an hour" is an example of active tense.

Active and passive are voices, not tenses. It is very important not to confuse the two:

They crowned Queen Victoria. [Past simple tense, active voice]
Queen Victoria was crowned. [Past simple tense, passive voice]

"Have been" is the present perfect of "be". The question is, can you transform this active sentence into the passive voice?

"Gregory has been to London."

Well, how do we transform an active sentence into a passive? There are two steps involved:

1. The direct object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence.

2. The helping verb is changed to the appropriate tense of "to be" or, if there is no helping verb, a simple tense of the verb "to be" is inserted; and the past participle of the following verb is taken.

Let's take a present perfect:

They have made a cake.

The object is "a cake", so that becomes the subject. The helping verb is "have", and the sentence is in the present perfect, so we take the present perfect of "to be" which is "have been". The following verb, "made", is already a past participle, so we don't need to change it. The result is:

A cake has been made.

Now let's go back to "Gregory has been to London". First step: Find the object. The object is..... Ah. There is no direct object.

In fact, "to be" never takes a direct object; instead it takes a complement. You cannot make a passive out of "Gregory has been to London".

However, in a sentence like the following, "has been" is not the verb, it is only a part of the verb, used to form the present perfect progressive:

She has been painting the ceiling for five hours.

"The ceiling" is a direct object; now we can form a passive. We take the present perfect progressive of "to be", which is "has been being", plus the past participle of "paint", and we make "the ceiling" the subject:

The ceiling has been being painted for five hours.

Few people would ever use that construction, though; it's just too clumsy and sounds unnatural. Most people would look for an alternative way to say the same thing.

[RonBee]

Rewboss is right.

Excellent!

~R