italki - Hi! I've been learning English. - Present Perfect Continuous, every English book states that. It bei

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Hi! I've been learning English. - Present Perfect Continuous, every English book states that. It being dark in the room, I couldn't find my book. - "It being dark in the room" not a single book in the library I went to explains what this is. I was wondering maybe here are some English teacher that know this. I know that we live in post intellectual society so I would be very grateful if at least someon ecould explain this to me. Thank you vety much and have a great day! #grammar #english

May 9, 2025 8:41 PM

Answers · 11

'It being dark in the room' is not present perfect continuous at all. It is a participle clause. It has the same meaning as 'It was dark in the room so I couldn't find my book' or 'Because it was dark in the room, I couldn't find my book'

May 10, 2025 5:22 PM

Great question. I wish I knew the answer for sure. I think this might be an 'absolute phrase'. If you search the internet asking 'What is an Absolute phrase? Give me some examples?' hopefully that will provide you with a better explanation than I ever could! Given that we might be in a post intellectual society, I used AI first, which may of course mean I am barking up the wrong tree.

May 10, 2025 3:19 PM

I know how it works, but I didn't know what it was called until I did an internet search. 'it being dark in the room' is apparently a non-restrictive clause. In my opinion: Whenever you see 'it being SOMETHING' you can think of it as 'since it was SOMETHING.' In the example above, you could understand it as: Since it was dark in the room, I couldn't find my book.

May 10, 2025 5:31 AM

Perfect requires "hace/had" so it's not it and your sentence It being dark in the room, I couldn't find my book works same way as Being drunk, I couldn't find the door in the fence. just a participle clause, impersonal

May 13, 2025 9:57 AM

“It being dark in the room” actually is not present perfect continuous. PPC is: has/have + been + verb -ing For example: I have been reading this book. I have been taking the bus. So you could say “I have been looking for my book, but it was dark. Hope this helps!!

May 9, 2025 10:57 PM

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