What you been doing?

English translation: Present perfect continuous (informal spoken)

GLOSSARY ENTRY (DERIVED FROM QUESTION BELOW)
English term or phrase:What you been doing?
Selected answer:Present perfect continuous (informal spoken)
Entered by: Yvonne Gallagher

14:36 Nov 11, 2018
English language (monolingual) [PRO]
Education / Pedagogy / Confusing Tense
English term or phrase: What you been doing?
From Hotel Transylvania Movie

Frankenstein: Hey, buddy, what you been doing?
Drac: Never mind that. What you been doing?
(Drac was hiding things on his friend all the time)

What is the tense of this phrase?

thank you
mohamed015
Morocco
Present perfect continuous
Explanation:
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/present-perfect-continuous-te...

but perfectly fine and commonly used without the auxiliary Have in comversational English

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Note added at 1 hr (2018-11-11 15:37:27 GMT)
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https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/intermediate-gram...
Selected response from:

Yvonne Gallagher
Ireland
Local time: 14:23
Grading comment
3 KudoZ points were awarded for this answer



SUMMARY OF ALL EXPLANATIONS PROVIDED
4 +8Present perfect continuous
Yvonne Gallagher
4ungrammatical, should be present perfect tense
Jack Doughty
4ungrammatical
mehdi yavari


Discussion entries: 2





  

Answers


2 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5
what you been doing?
ungrammatical, should be present perfect tense


Explanation:
What have you been doing?

Jack Doughty
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:23
Native speaker of: English
PRO pts in category: 56

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  Patricia Fierro, M. Sc.
13 mins
  -> Thank you.

agree  philgoddard: Yes, it's ungrammatical in written English, but very common in speech.
48 mins
  -> Thank you.

disagree  Yvonne Gallagher: sorry Jack but it's Present Perfect Continuous without "have". But you yourself wrote it as "What have you been doing" which is Present Perfect Continuous!
56 mins
  -> If it's without "have" it isn't perfect (in the grammatical sense.//Yes, what I wrote was Present Perfect Continuous. because it includes "have", but the query text is not.

disagree  B D Finch: It's colloquial and film scripts are supposed to read like speech.
1 hr
  -> It is both colloquial and ungrammatical. I may be wrong but I assume the asker wants to know what it should be.

neutral  Charles Davis: You are quite right that it is equivalent to "what have you been doing?", but this tense is not the present perfect (which would be "what have you done?") but rather the present perfect continuous. It is informal rather than ungrammatical.
8 hrs

disagree  Oliver Simões: I beg to disagree. Despite its colloquial usage, I don't see anything wrong with this verb tense in this particular context. Supposedly, the action started in the past and continues into the present (i.e. it's an ongoing action).
14 hrs

agree  Sheila Wilson: 100% with Phil's comment. Present perfect tense is the grammatical one here - continuous/progressive rather than simple
19 hrs
  -> Thank you.
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17 mins   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5 peer agreement (net): +8
what you been doing?
Present perfect continuous


Explanation:
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/present-perfect-continuous-te...

but perfectly fine and commonly used without the auxiliary Have in comversational English

--------------------------------------------------
Note added at 1 hr (2018-11-11 15:37:27 GMT)
--------------------------------------------------

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/intermediate-gram...

Yvonne Gallagher
Ireland
Local time: 14:23
Specializes in field
Native speaker of: Native in EnglishEnglish
PRO pts in category: 59

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
agree  B D Finch: Imposing the grammar of written English onto spoken English was partly responsible for the BBC sounding so stilted in the 1930s (and quite a lot later too).
57 mins
  -> Many thanks. Yes indeed and not just the BBC...!

agree  Uygar Kibar
1 hr
  -> Many thanks:-)

neutral  Tony M: Without the 'have' acceptable as it may be in speech, it cannot be the perfect; in this case, without 'have', it drops back to being an imperfect continuous — there is no implication that the action has finished.
2 hrs
  -> The "have" is implied here, just dropped as is common in speech. And who said the action was finished?

agree  Charles Davis: Of course "have" is implied and this is present perfect continuous. The present perfect would be "what have you done?". Tony's suggestion that this is an imperfect continuous (which would be "what were you doing?") is bizarre to my mind and clearly wrong.
8 hrs
  -> Many thanks:-) Yes, Tony's suggestion makes no sense to me either but I see he's dropped his agree to it being present perfect which I also found rather odd

agree  Katalin Horváth McClure
8 hrs
  -> Many thanks:-)

agree  Oliver Simões
14 hrs
  -> Many thanks:-)

agree  Arabic & More
20 hrs
  -> Many thanks:-)

agree  katsy
21 hrs
  -> Many thanks:-)

agree  D. I. Verrelli: The informal spoken version I think is more commonly phrased with "you" so unstressed that it becomes closer to "What ya been doing?", or even "Whatcha bin doin'?". Perhaps "What _you_ been doing?" with stressed "you" occurs in some regional variants.
21 days
  -> Many thanks:-)
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4 days   confidence: Answerer confidence 4/5Answerer confidence 4/5
what you been doing?
ungrammatical


Explanation:
what have you been doing?

mehdi yavari
Iran
Local time: 17:53
Specializes in field
Native speaker of: Native in Persian (Farsi)Persian (Farsi)

Peer comments on this answer (and responses from the answerer)
neutral  Tony M: As several have already pointed out, although this appears not to follow the rules of grammar, at least as far as written EN is concerned, the simple fact is it is commonly used in "English as she is spoke", and the rules will just have to catch up.
40 mins
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