S + (has or have) + been + past participle

Hi Joshua,

The past participle here is ‘been’. Its origin is ‘there is/are’, which means sth exists or happens. After ‘there is/are/was/were/has been/have been’, normally a noun is used. This noun is the real subject of the sentence. ‘There has been’ in your sentence isn’t followed by an adjective, but by a modified noun (adjective + noun). The modified noun here is ‘inadequate research’.

quote:

S + (has or have) + been + past participle

This forms a passive structure in the present perfect, e.g. a lot of trees have been planted. Note that the passive structure is always used with transitive verbs.

BTW, you should have used the passive structure in your question and written it like this:

Why isn’t ‘has been’ followed by ……instead of ….?

quote:

The problem is that there has been inadequate research and theory development to support the fast growing practice of scenario planning.

S + (has or have) + been + past participle

(1) Does it mean "been" is playing two roles; one is "been" and one is "past participle" ?
(2) Could you tell me what is the transitive verbs for the above sentence?

quote:

(1) Does it mean "been" is playing two roles; one is "been" and one is "past participle" ?

In both cases ‘been’ is the past participle of verb to ‘be’. In the first sentence it is the main verb. In the second one, it is used to form the passive voice and it is followed by the past participle of the main verb of the sentence.

quote:

(2) Could you tell me what is the transitive verbs for the above sentence?

A transitive verb means that it must have an object. It is marked {T} in dictionaries. I’ll paraphrase your sentence like this:
Inadequate research and theory development have supported the fast growing practice of scenario planning.

The transitive verb here is ‘support’ which is followed by a direct object (the fast growing ……).

Now, if we say: He walks to school every day, you see that ‘walk’ is intransitive (as it doesn’t have an object).

As for ‘linking verbs’, you can write ‘linking verbs’ above and you will get a lot of information about them.

BTW, Your question should be: Could you tell me what the transitive verbs are in the sentence above?
David has given you a detailed explanation about that on this link:
http://thegrammarexchange.info...0600179/m/3822906037

Ahmed,

- Thank you so much for clarifying the meaning of "transitive verb" and "intransitive".

- However, I still not clear about your below explanation. Could you tell me whether it is a "Present Perfect Passive" if a sentence is constructed according to below condition?

The past participle here is ‘been’. Its origin is ‘there is/are’, which means sth exists or happens. After ‘there is/are/was/were/has been/have been’, normally a noun is used. This noun is the real subject of the sentence. ‘There has been’ in your sentence isn’t followed by an adjective, but by a modified noun (adjective + noun). The modified noun here is ‘inadequate research’.

quote:

The problem is that there has been inadequate research and theory development to support the fast growing practice of scenario planning.

Hi, Joshua and Ahmed —

What a convoluted sentence! I see that it comes from page 2 of this academic article. Although I agree, for the most part, with Ahmed's explanations here, I would like to add a few comments of my own.

Joshua, I think the reason for your perplexity here is that you have been trying to read There + (has or have) + been + noun phrase as S + (has or have) + been + past participle, whereas, as you can see, they are not the same structure at all.

You know, of course, that a noun phrase is not a past participle. Well, "inadequate research and theory development" is a noun phrase, and that is the phrase that follows "there has been" in your sentence. Ahmed has explained this above in his own way.

Let's look at a different example:

• There has been a lot of rain lately.

You don't have trouble with that sentence, do you? You know that "has been" is not followed by a past participle in that sentence, and that the sentence does not, by any stretch of the imagination, contain "Present Perfect Passive" construction.

Now I'd like to look at your example from the standpoint of meaning.

quote:

I’ll paraphrase your sentence like this:
Inadequate research and theory development have supported the fast growing practice of scenario planning.

That paraphrase doesn't work for me, Ahmed. I understand the main point of the sentence to be that research and theory development have not supported the fast-growing practice of scenario planning; that is the reason the author has described the research and theory development as being inadequate.

Interestingly, Joshua, although there is no present-perfect-passive structure in your example, I believe it is possible to paraphrase your example in such a way that it does contain a present-perfect-passive structure.

• The problem is that the fast-growing practice of scenario planning has been inadequately supported by research and theory development.