Visser (§2148) によると，'He has been crying' や 'He had been crying' のタイプの完了進行形は，後期中英語期の Cursor Mundi に初例が確認される．
13.. Curs, M. 5256 he three dais had fastand bene. | Ibid. 10305, fastand had he lang noght bene. | Ibid. 14240, mari and martha had been wepand þar four dais. | Ibid. 26292, if þi parischen In sin lang has ligand bene. | Ibid. 28176, Oft haue i bene ouer mistrauand. | Ibid. 28941, þin almus agh þou for to bede, And namli til him þat has bene Hauand ..., And falles in-to state o nede plight-less.
この後も Chaucer を含めた後期中英語のテキストからの用例が続く．ただし，最も早い例が後期中英語期にいくつか確認されるからといって，必ずしも現代英語の水準で確立されているような1つの時制として，当時すでに頻繁に用いられていたということではない．実際，論者のなかには，その確立は近代英語期以降である，場合によっては後期近代英語期であると述べているものもある．Visser 自身は上記の同じ節にて，次のように説いている．
These types, traditionally called the 'perfect progressive' or 'expanded perfect' and the 'pluperfect progressive' or 'expanded pluperfect', are not represented in Old English. They appear for the first time on paper in the 14th century, and it took them about a century to develop into a well-established and not infrequently used idiom. In the subjoined list all the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17the century instances available are mentioned (and it is therefore not a selection like the rest), in order to show the erroneousness of various statements concerning date of earliest appearance and the incidence in earlier English (often called 'rare').. Thus Åkerlund (1911 p. 85) states: "These tenses do not occur in Old English, nor in the earlier part of the subsequent period. Later on, they creep slowly into existence---even as late as Shakespeare there are strikingly scarce; but they are not employed frequently enough." Kisbye (An Historical Outline of Eng. Syntax I 1971 p. 47) observes: "The expanded pluperfect was instance only once [italics added] in Northern ME ...---This compound tense ... being uncommon till the 19th century [italics added]." In Barbara Strang's The History of English (1970 pp. 207--8) it is averred that the periphrastic perfect did not become fully current till the 18th century, and that the periphrastic pluperfect showed its full maturity fro the time of the Restoration. (But see e.g. the quotations from Lord Berners below). As to her statement that a pluperfect progressive arose "a little earlier [than a perfect progressive] in the 14th century", see earliest examples of the perfect progressive is from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1386).
論者間によって捉え方に幅があったということは，用例収集の精度に差があり，事実が共有されていなかったということだろう．一方で，過去完了進行形の出現のほうが，現在完了進行形に先立っていたという事実は興味深い．
・ Visser, F. Th. An Historical Syntax of the English Language. 3 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1963--1973.
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