atw: Re: Particular past tense

Oh dear. Sorry about that mishap with the previous post.

Michael:
>Ah, yes. The power of democracy. Never mind the facts; a sufficiently large
number of the ignorant can always turn the tide.

But at least that large number (based on my sample of 5) have the good grace
to be talking about something other than the subject of this discussion,
which I now propose to subvert. It seems the "present perfect continuous",
according to the websites, is what we get when we deploy that bane of
English learners, the present participle, thus, *"The driver has been losing
control of his truck and he's been ending up in a creek". Which is plainly
not possible here. It works in something like "I've been studying this
question all night". And it's different from the plain present perfect;
compare "I've washed my car as long as I've owned it" with the somewhat
silly "I've been washing my car as long as I've owned it".

I take Michael's point about perfect and continuous being a dichotomy, but
I've always called this construction with the present participle
"continuous". So this isn't really perfect? Because it's still happening?
(In which case I suppose the websites are just simplifying.)

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