To begin, the past perfect tense could simply be defined as the past of the past.
- It indicates that an action had happened before a given time in the past where another action happened.
- It describes an action completed before a defined past moment.
- It describes an action that comes before another action in the past.
- It describes a past action that began and ended before another action in the past.
She hadn't taken her medicine yet, when the doctor arrived.
They hadn't understood the lesson yet.
Interrogative:
Had + subj + verb in the past participle.
Examples:
Had her mother been there when the doctor arrived?
Had they told you the story?
The problem for most students is when they encounter an irregular verb they didn't know. But as for regular verbs they constitute no challenge as the form is always "verb+ed" because of the no-inflexion of the regular verbs in the past and past participle.
How are all these details used to make correct utterances?
Look at these two sentences. We need to combine them to tell which of the two actions comes first.
Leila took her umbrella. She went out.
Now observe how we can decide which action of the two (take the umbrella) or (go out) comes first:
Clearly because of the rain,
Leila had taken her umbrella before she went out.
Before she went out, Leila had taken her umbrella.
This way we place the events in their correct chronological order of action in time.
Let me borrow something for you from the Moroccan traditional eating habits. In Morocco, we generally eat couscous with bare hands. So we always have to wash our hands before and after eating.
Last night Hadj Brahim ate couscous. He washed his hands.
Here I want you to tell me which of the two actions (eating couscous) or (washing hands) was the first? You cannot unless you use the past perfect tense with the simple past tense.
If I want to combine the two sentences, I need to show if the washing was before or after the eating of couscous.
Last night Hadj Brahim had washed his hands before he ate couscous.
Last night after Hadj Brahim had washed his hands, he ate couscous.
In these two sentences, thanks to the use of the past perfect tense, I could understand that the action of washing comes before the action of eating and the two actions occurred in the past.
Now contemplate these
Last night when Hadj Brahim had eaten couscous, he washed his hands.
In this case, the action of (eating couscous) comes first. Amazing! No?
In time clauses, the past perfect tense is used when a past action followed another. But generally the lapse of time which separates the two actions is not defined. Let's take the example above and try to show how much time (long or short) had elapsed before the following action took place.
Hadj Brahim washed his hands. He ate couscous.
To do this we have to use the right linkers. OK, there are many connectors that can join the two sentences together and we have seen three so far, notably before, after and when. And these only show that a given action had occurred before another. Now if we want to stress the fact that the time elapsed before the second action happened is very short, we can call upon other linkers namely:
"no sooner .. than" or "no sooner .. when" , "as soon as"
No sooner had Hadj Brahim washed his hands than he ate couscous. (pay attention to the order of words here)
As soon as Hadj Brahim had eaten couscous, he washed his hands.
Things go very fast. The lapse of time separating action one (washing hands) and (eating couscous) is almost unmentioned. Likewise the time separating actions one and two in example (2) is very short.
Till or until
The combination of two past actions can be done with till or until.
They had kept silent till the teacher came.
They hadn't left until the bell rang.
More examples:
We had left the room before he finished his speech.
He read the book after he had seen the film.
I hadno soonerarrived home when I dropped asleep.
No soonerhad Leila left the car than it started to rain.
As soon as they had left the bank, they jumped into a luxurious car.
She had waiteduntil the doctor arrived.
They hadn't told me anything until they finished dinner.
In order to be precise in your use of the past perfect indicating the sequence of events, one has to be more careful about the meaning than about the grammatical structure:
After I had watched the film, the lights went out.
Before I watched the film, the lights had gone out.
In this pair of sentences, the use of the past perfect tense in the "after" and "before" clauses is to be carefully prepared for the sake of meaning.
In example (1) the speaker did watch the film; whereas in example (2) he didn't because the lights had already been out.
"After" is formally followed by a perfect tense.
After she had read the message, she left hurriedly.
"Before" is generally followed by simple past.
Before she heard the news, she had been calm.
The combination of past simple and past perfect with "as soon as" and "no sooner" stresses the fact that the lapse of time separating the two actions was very short.
- As soon as Leila had opened the office door, the boss told her the bad news.
- No sooner had they finished eating, than they left the restaurant [immediately].
Joke
: Why is the Past Perfect in a good mood?
: Because he had been "tense" until he met up with the Simple Past.
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