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When telling stories in the past tense, I've noticed that Americans will tend to say "I was standing on stage..." or "I was sitting at our table at Friendly's last night when..." while the Brits will tend toward "I was stood on stage..." or "I was sat at our table at Nando's last night when...". It's quite interesting, that the British will generally use this passive past type structure while the Americans will generally use the continuous past for the same situations.

Does this phenomenon have a name? Has it been studied?

Examples of this used in British Speech:

TheEnvironmentalist
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    Before naming it, I think the fact needs to be established and frankly, as a Brit speaker, having lived in several parts of Scotland and England, my experience does not tally with what you are suggesting. I think some evidence is required. – Nigel J Mar 04 '18 at 03:36
  • Although I probably wouldn't say it that way, "I was sat at our table at Nando's" makes sense to me because in restaurants hosts typically "seat" guests. An American would likely say "I stood / was standing on stage" and "I sat / was sitting at our table." The one that really throws me, is "I was stood on stage." Do you have a link to that usage? I don't dispute it necessarily, but I don't remember ever hearing it. – Bread Mar 04 '18 at 03:41
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    @Bread so I don't mean "someone sat me," I mean "I was sitting" except it's said as "I was sat", and for reference to the "I was stood on stage" I was just watching Jack Whitehall's 2012 comedy tour from his night at the Hammersmith Apollo. He used this grammatical structure frequently, which makes sense considering most of his set (any comedy set really) was telling stories. This made me think of examples I've had in England and interacting with the English, and I realized I've heard this many times before – TheEnvironmentalist Mar 04 '18 at 04:29
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    https://www.google.com/search?q=%22i%20was%20stood%20on%22&tbm=bks&lr=lang_en – Jim Mar 04 '18 at 04:31
  • @Bread https://youtu.be/13iJuiMjYeY?t=41m47s – TheEnvironmentalist Mar 04 '18 at 04:31
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    @NigelJ It's definitely a thing, and has been asked about here before; see https://english.stackexchange.com/q/336376/177853 and linked questions. (I don't think this is quite a duplicate of any of those, since they ask different questions about the grammatical form rather than asking for a name of the form.) One of the questions asks how widespread it is, another how acceptable; the answers seem to be that it is regional, but perhaps spreading in recent years. – 1006a Mar 04 '18 at 04:41
  • @1006a Looking at the links, I'm aware of the usage (Yorkshire mostly) but I'm not conscious of it being widespread or predominant. – Nigel J Mar 04 '18 at 07:56
  • I don't suppose it could be construed as a dialectical survival of the be-perfect? I'd never given this construction much thought, but it's precisely sitzen, stehen, and liegen (sit stand, lie) that Southern Germans use sein to form perfect tenses while other dialects do not. – KarlG Mar 04 '18 at 08:49
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    Also related: Is there any difference between “I'm sat” and “I'm sitting”? @NigelJ Once you become aware of its existence, you keep hearing and reading "was sat" and its elk everywhere on British TV and papers. No one bats an eyelid. – Mari-Lou A Mar 04 '18 at 10:43
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it makes an unsupported assertion that several reject, and fails to consider different dialects and registers. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 04 '18 at 16:30
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    @NigelJ It is absolutely very widespread. Whether it’s predominant, I don’t know, but it’s in common use by people from all over the country—though not, as mentioned in the question, in AmE at all. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Mar 05 '18 at 00:26

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