Introducing English Linguistics

have been murdered as early as
Friday morning, more than 24 hours before her body was discovered.
(BNC A49 659)
While it is possible to find up to three primary auxiliaries, such examples
are rare. The example below contains three primary auxiliaries – has, been,
and being – preceding the lexical verb discussed:
That er, er, little action has been taken in the last thirty forty years since
this 
has been being discussed, erm, I think the first international confer-
ence erm, produced their own report in nineteen sixty. 
(BNC JJG 542)
Only two examples of verb phrases like this occurred in the 100-million-
word British National Corpus.