Perfect progressive aspect | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy

Hello, grammarians!

Previously, I had covered three of the basic aspects of English, and that's simple, perfect, and progressive. So, there's just one more, and it's a combination of the last two, and it's called the perfect progressive.

To recap what those two things do: the perfect denotes something that is complete, and the progressive notes something that has been ongoing. 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.

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 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."

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've been eating," or "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!