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The Past Perfect Tense

1. Form

Affirmative: S + had + infinitive form of the verb + ed/ 3rd form for irregular verbs

Negative: S+ had + not + infinitive form of the verb + ed/ 3rd form for irregular
verbs

Interrogative: had + S+ infinitive form of the verb + ed/ 3rd form for irregular verbs?

Negative
Interrogative: had + S + not + infinitive form of the verb + ed/ 3rd form for irregular
verbs?

2. Spelling note
● When a verb of one syllable has one vowel and ends in a single consonant,
this consonant is doubled before ed : stop-stopped, admit-admitted
● Verbs ending in y following a consonant, change the y into i and add ed:
carry-carried but obey-obeyed (y following a vowel does not change)

3. Use
a) Is the past equivalent of the present perfect. The past perfect is, however, not
restricted to actions whose time is not mentioned.
Ex: He had left his case in the 4.40 train.
present: Ann has just left.
Past: When I arrived, Ann had just left.

b) For a past action which began before the time of speaking and continued up
to that time or stopped just before it:
Ex: He had been in the army for 20 years.
c) Is used as the equivalent of the simple past tense in narrations, when, from a
certain point in the past, the narrator or subject looks back in time:
Ex: Tom was 23 when the story begins. His father had died five years
before and since then Tom had lived alone.
He met her in Paris in 1960. He had seen her last ten years
before.Her hair had been grey at their first meeting, was now white.

1
Past and perfect tenses in time clauses
➢ Clauses with when
When one past action follows another, we can combine them by using when and two
simple past tenses:
Ex: He called her a liar. She smacked his face.
When he called her a liar she smacked his face.
The past perfect is used after when when we wish to emphasize that the first action
was completed before the second one started:
Ex: When we had shut the window we opened the door of the cage. (we
waited for the window to be quite shut before opening the cage)
When he had seen all the pictures he said he was ready to leave. (after
seeing them)
➢ Two past actions can also be combined with till/until, as soon as, before
and past perfect tense is used when we want to emphasize that the first
action was completely finished before the second one started:
Ex: As soon as his guests had drunk all his brandy they left his house.
➢ after is normally followed by a perfect tense:
Ex: After the will had been read there were angry exclamations.

Use of past perfect in indirect speech


a. Present perfect tenses in direct speech become past perfect past perfect
tenses in indirect speech provided the introductory term is in the past tense:
Ex: He said, “I’ve been in England for ten years.”.
He said he had been in England for ten years.
She said, “I will lend you the book as soon as I have read it myself.”
She said that she would lend me the book as soon as she had read
it herself.
b. Simple past tenses in indirect speech usually change similarly (but there are a
number of cases where past tenses remain unchanged):
Ex: He said, “I knew her well”.
He said that he had known her well.

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