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The English Tense in Passive Voice


Yesterday I read Modern English:A Practical Reference Guide written by Marcella Frank, and she gives a paradigm about tenses on page 50. The page shows tenses in active voice and passive voice; she said these four tenses are exceedingly rare:



  1. shall/will be being offered

  2. has/have been being offered

  3. had been being offered

  4. shall/will have been being offered


Why are these tense so rare? Are they normally replaced by other tenses?



Answer



Those constructions are all rare because they are too cumbersome, and so shorter constructions are used instead. It is exquisitely difficult to construct a contextual framework in which the longer version would make more sense than the shorter one.


They are also too confusing. All those markers of a continuous aspect are superfluous in all but the rarest of circumstances, especially when combined with a completed aspect.


1. shall/will be being offered


This should normally be simply shall/will be offered without the being part:



  • It’s not being offered now.

  • It will be offered later.

  • We will be offering that later on.


2. has/have been being offered


3. had been being offered


These two try to combine a perfect construction (have + past participle) with a continuous aspect (be + present participle). The speaker should make up their mind about whether the action is completed or continuing.



  • It hasn’t been offered lately.

  • It hadn’t been offered yet.

  • It wasn’t offered yet.

  • It wasn’t being offered yet.

  • It hadn’t been offered yet.

  • We weren’t offering that then.

  • We hadn’t been offering that way back then. (poor)

  • We didn’t offer that way back then. (better)

  • We weren’t offering that way back then. (also better)


4. shall/will have been being offered


This has the same problem as before: a confusion of continuous and completed aspects. Use only one.



  • It will be offered then.

  • We will be offering it later.

  • It will have already been offered by then.


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