Comment

Comment by agalunar

Mm, I think it could come up quite naturally as "she must have been being watched" in something like:

  Two detectives are watching security film.

    DETECTIVE 1
  And then from 9:07 to 9:14 she started acting very cautiously, but –

  Detective 1 rewinds the tape by a few seconds and gestures at the screen.

    DETECTIVE 1
  – from this angle you can tell that she's making an effort to not seem suspicious. I wonder why?

    DETECTIVE 2
  She must've been being watched.
I do agree that form "must have had been being —ed" (with "had" in there as well) is an especially rare form, but in context, native English speakers understand what it means!

I wonder how many other constructions there are that native speakers don't really produce but that they still consider grammatical or as not even being unusual.

parent agalunar 3 years ago

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton