Learn English – What tense is this sentence in ‘It has been considered’

tense

'It has been …' suggests that it is in present perfect continuous but the verb 'consider' should ends with '-ing' in perfect continuous.
Why this is gramatically correct, or maybe it isn't?

Thanks!

Best Answer

In a perfect contruction, the lexical (main) verb does not indicate the tense. What indicates the tense is the perfective auxiliary verb—i.e the form of HAVE before the past participle. So "it has been considered" is present tense.

Now what is "been" here?

The main use of the form of BE is to mark a progressive aspect and a passive voice*. In the progressive aspect, the BE is followed by a present participle verb as in

He has been running. (Active voice with progressive aspect)

In the passive voice, it's followed by a past participle, as in your example

It has been considered wrong. (Passive voice with perfect aspect)


*Not always. Not all passive contructions are marked by BE. We also have bare passive, concealed passive, and get-passive. Those don't need a BE to mark them.

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