Passive using the "be" verb: "is been" [closed]
'Be' is an overworked word. Relevant usages here are:
- Be is a/the copula, used to link [the subject] to a nounal or adjectival complement:
He is the tallest lad in the class. He is very tall.
2a. Be is an auxiliary/auxiliary verb, used with present participles to make 'continuous' constructions such as
He is eating his tea. He is/was/will [then] be sleeping.
But as you say, ' ... is existing ...' sounds far from natural. Stative verbs often resist the formation of continuous forms. *He is possessing a new car. / *He is being cold. / He is being rude.
- Be is used to make the passive construction/s. Huddleston and Pullum, the authors of 'The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language', distinguish between two forms of passive: the 'adjectival passive' and the 'be-passive' (The 'get-passive' also exists, but is not relevant here).
In the sentence 'Albuquerque is located in New Mexico', 'located' exemplifies the 'adjectival passive' according to H & P, but in the sentence ‘The source of the White Nile was located in 1937 [by the German explorer Burkhart Waldecker]', 'was located' is the 'be-passive'. The difference is that the be-passive has a covert – or, if the by-phrase is included, overt – agent (here, Herr Waldecker).
Note that some sentences are ambiguous. 'The window was broken' may be either passive construction. 'The window was broken, we noticed as soon as we arrived' must be the adjectival passive, and 'The window was broken by the hailstones' must be the be-passive. Also, there is arguably a continuum between verbiness and adjectiveness in sentences such as 'He is loved'.
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Not all verbs, and no intransitive verbs (or rather intransitive usages), passivise. Exist is intransitive and be has rare excursions as an intransitive verb ('I am') (I'll not over-complicate by listing this as number (4) in the list here) which your fourth example seems to be searching for. Copular forms don't passivise either, though they may invert: 'Our Johnny is a fine boy.' ↔ 'A fine boy is our Johnny.'
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2b. To complicate matters, there is a rare usage of be to form the perfect construction, where have would be by far the most normal auxiliary of choice. The be-perfect is archaic or nowadays a literary style choice, except in the odd expression ('He'll let us know when he is/has finished').
In order to make your question more understandable, I would first like to propose to revise/rephrase it. Your original question reads as:
I'd like to know if there's any way to have an "is" in a passive tense.
The answer to this question is (of course) "Yes" and it is straightforward to see how:
- ACTIVE: Cats catch mice.
- PASSIVE : Mice are caught by cats.
Based on the information you have presented in your question entry, I assume that your intention is actually to ask:
I'd like to know if there's any way to have an "is been" in a passive tense.
Now, the answer to this rephrased question is NO. I'll try to explain this by using "reverse engineering":
(I) In order for us to be able to talk about the passive of a sentence, the sentence needs to have at least one object:
- ACTIVE: The man painted the wall.
- PASSIVE: The wall was painted [by the man].
Here, the object is "the wall".
(II) Some sentences have more than one object (a direct and an indirect object). Therefore, they have two different passive forms for each of the two objects:
- ACTIVE: They gave me a book.
- PASSIVE-1: A book was given to me [by them].
- PASSIVE-2: I was given a book [by them].
The second passive form may look strange to some readers, but both passive forms are correct. On the other hand, PASSIVE-1 is more common in formal written English while PASSIVE-2 is more common is spoken English.
(III) A passive sentence of the form "Y is been [by X]", which is the one you question about, corresponds to an active sentence of the form "X is/are Y". This is a sentence in Simple Present Tense and its main verb is the verb "to be".
(IV) An active sentence in Simple Present Tense of the form "X is/are Y" usually expresses a happening, a quality, a location, etc:
- HAPPENING: The meeting is tonight.
- QUALITY: Jane is beautiful.
- LOCATION: Jack is at home now.
Obviously, these sentences and similar sentences of this form do not have an object and therefore they do not have a corresponding passive from.