Forming the past perfect
Past perfect:
Affirmative: had + verb 3 (past participle)
Negative: hadn’t + verb 3 (past participle)
Past perfect continuous:
Affirmative: had + been + present participle
Negative: hadn’t + been + present participle
Meaning
- Past perfect is used to talk about finished actions that happened before a certain time in the past.
- I had finished lunch when they arrived.
- You had left by the time they got here.
- He didn’t want to come with us because he had already seen the film.
- Past perfect continuous is used to talk about longer actions or events that happened before or up to another action or event in the past.
- He was tired because he had been playing football all day.
- They ‘d been driving for three hours when the accident happened.
- When I saw her I could see that she had been crying.
- When the action or event is more temporary we often use past perfect continuous. When it is more permanent we often use past perfect.
- We found the house where my grandparents had lived. (past perfect)
- We found a house where another family had been living for a few months. (past perfect continuous)
Additional points
- Some verbs are not normally used with past perfect continuous because they are not action verbs. believe, belong, depend, hate, know, like, love, mean, need, prefer, realise, suppose, want, understand.
- I had known him for ten years when he got married – correct
- I had been knowing him for ten years when he got married –incorrect
- I had belonged to the tennis club for 25 years when I left – correct
- I had been belonging to the tennis club for 25 years when I left –incorrect
Pronunciation
See the phonemic chart for IPA symbols used below.
- If had is not completely contracted, it is usually reduced to its weak form in affirmative sentences and questions, sometimes with elision and intrusion.
- We had already arrived:
/wiː həd/ or /wiːjəd/ (the /h/ sound is elided and the /j/ sound intrudes) - You had tried many times:
/juː həd/ or /uːwəd/ (the /h/ sound is elided and the /w/ sound intrudes) - Had they eaten? /həd/
- We had already arrived:
- Been is usually reduced to its weak form in past perfect continuous.
- We’d been driving for a long time: /bɪn/
6 comments
NWtefl
Like many teachers i have my own grammar area that Im particulary fond of. I’ve done the past perfect with a group of students and, though they generally understand how it is used with the past simple, there was a question that came up today that I doubt I explained that well.
Basically they had a list of questions, some correct and some incorrect, and they had to identify those that were wrong.
It was going okay until the last sentence : “By the time he’d made up his mind, she’d gone”.
A lot of students said this was wrong when it was correct. However, a few disputed it as it didnt follow the rules we had discussed nor follow the pattern of an earlier sentence i.e. “By the time the police arrived, the thief had left”.
The first sentence has “by the time + past perfect + past perfect” while the other has “by the time + past simple + past perfect”. However, both are okay.
So can someone explain this :
We say “By the time he’d made up his mind, she’d gone” (past perfect + past perfect) AND “By the time he made up, she’d gone” (past simple + past perfect). The second sentence is easier to explain but the first is also okay.
Therefore – how do I explain the difference in meaning between those 2 sentences ?
Keith Taylor
By the time he’d made up his mind, she’d gone.
I agree with you that normally, if we follow the “rule”, we should probably use past simple in the first half of this sentence, so:
By the time he made up his mind, she’d gone.
But… two things here:
1. “Rules” more often than not turn out to be just tendencies. Language is evolving all the time – spoken language probably more rapidly than written language.
In fact, spoken grammar is often markedly different to written grammar and, although may purists will disagree with me, “correct” English is English that is in common use, not what a decades-old rule says it should be. To me it sounds quite natural to say “by the time he’d made up his mind, she’d gone” and so we can say that it is correct and that there is no real difference in meaning between the two sentences.
2. It may even be “correct” anyway (according to the “rules” I mean). Think about what happens when we report speech:
Direct speech: “By the time he made up his mind, she’d gone”.
Indirect/reported speech: He said that by the time he’d made up his mind, she’d gone.
Hope that helps.
Carol
I usually draw a timeline (a long one) on the board or on a big piece of paper. Then I invite students to write about the events that day. For example:
Student A:
7am: I had breakfast
8am: I went to school
12pm: I went back home
13pm: I finished my homework
15pm: I arrived for my English class
Student B:
8am: I had breakfast
9am: I went to work
15pm: I left work
15:15pm: I arrived (late) for my class
Then I model the first sentence:
When student B had breakfast, student A had already had breakfast (or had already gone to school).
Then students have to come up with other sentences using the information on the board. They can do it in pairs, comparing their days or even their lives! i.e. When I got married, you had already had 2 children….
Yadegari
I divide the class into two groups and give each group some sentences. The sentences for group 1 are the past simple and for group 2 the past perfect.
Group 1 have sentences like…
I was nervous before the flight.
She was hungry.
He was tired all day.
Group 2 have sentences like…
I hadn’t flown before.
She hadn’t eaten for hours
He hadn’t slept well last night.
I ask one student from group 1 to read their sentence and a student from group 2 to finish it with a “because” sentence.
PhillyT
Hi,
So here’s a question from “Skills for the TOEIC”
– Several members of the audience left the auditorium before the speaker_______ his speech.
(A) finishing
(B) have finished
(C) had finished
(D) had been finished
The answer is C, so my question is, (why) is the sentence correct? Should it not be the audience HAD LEFT since this action took place before the speaker FINISHED his speech?
Thanks!
Keith Taylor
In sentences like this (with “before”) the past perfect can refer to a time after the action in the main verb. I know this sounds like a strange thing to say, but it is perfectly correct.
We could say the sentence like this, with past simple in both clauses:
Several members of the audience left the auditorium before the speaker finished his speech.
This, to me, is just a statement of fact, whereas using the past perfect implies, I think, that it is quite surprising that they left:
Several members of the audience left the auditorium before the speaker had finished his speech!
The other way to look at this is that answer (C) is the only possible grammatically correct answer anyway. If you take the clause in isolation, none of the others make sense grammatically:
before the speaker finishing his speech.
before the speaker have finished his speech.
before the speaker had been finished his speech.