Post
by shuntang » Fri Apr 30, 2004 11:15 am
I remembered I have talked about Past Perfect, but I couldn't locate it in this thread. I searched for a long time and I found out that I posted it in the thread "Standard Use Of Used To Or Not?" Now I transfer it also to this present thread. Thus I can say all my comments can be found in this thread.
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I prefer to use a paragraph of sentences to explain Pluperfect (=Past Perfect), as I believe tenses are used to tell the time relations between actions. And yet I think I can't add anything new here.
The Foundation of Past Perfect and past continuous
In telling a story, the writer is presumed to have known the whole story, and normally he will describe actions in sequence:
Ex: “He came near a village. A farmer talked to him. He went into the village.” (please excuse my short sentences.)
== In this circumstance let's call the flow of actions is orderly or smooth (CAME and then TALKED and then WENT).
Only when the flow is broken does the writer use signal to remind readers. He uses Past Perfect or Past Continuous Tense:
Ex: "He came near a village. He went into it. A farmer had talked to him about a resting place."
== Here is the point, every action in a story is compared with, and according to, its precedent sentence. TALK happens before GO but puts behind it, therefore the flow is broken. We call this retrospection, looking back to another action. In describing a story, the writer has to use a special tense to remind readers of it. As we can see, the order or the flow of actions is important in choosing tenses.
However, the action in subordinate clause is different:
Ex: “He came near a village. Before he went into it he talked to a farmer.”
== Action in the subordinate GO is compared to its main action TALK, rather than to its precedent action COME.
The point can be clearer if we use after-clause:
Ex: “He came near a village. After he had talked to a farmer he went into it.”
== TALK in the subordinate indicates a case before the main action GO, not before its precedent action COME. But the point still is, HAD TALKED is used not because of the action following.
In regard to subordinate clause, however, it compares only to the main clause and remains the same tense no matter it is placed before or after:
Ex: “He came near a village. After he had talked to a farmer he went into it.”
Ex: “He came near a village. He went into it after he had talked to a farmer.”
It is easy to notice that, at the beginning of a paragraph, where the writer wants to indicate it happens prior to the precedent paragraph, he starts with Past Perfect for the first sentence, and then in the next sentence go back to Simple Past promptly because he has to anticipate another retrospection, which would call for Past Perfect again. In other words, if "had used to" is at the beginning of a paragraph, then it happens earlier than the paragraph preceding.
Both Past Perfect and Past Continuous are retrospective, indicating a disruption of the flow of actions. In a smooth flow of actions, there shouldn’t be past continuous:
Ex1: “He came near a village. A farmer talked to him. ?He was going into it.” (=Not ok)
Ex2: “He came near a village. A farmer greeted and talked to him. They were going into it together.”
== In Ex2, Past Continuous indicates GO happens before TALK (not GREET) and together with TALK.
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Therefore, I guess that before "had used to", there must be another Simple Past sentence happened later than it, or "had used to" is in the subordinate clause. In the very short, "had used to" is a retrospection.
I searched for "had used to" and there were many such examples at the first resulting page:
Ex: This was an adaptation of a technique that researchers Kong-Peng Lam and Klaus Rajewski had used to study lymphoid cells, but it had not been applied to cancer modeling,” said Orkin.
Ex: In Pittsburgh last month, several visiting St. John's University basketball players were cleared of a rape accusation after one team member gave investigators his cell phone, which he had used to videotape some of the encounter.
Ex: An article by Christensen and Suess published in Byte magazine described CBBS and outlined the technology they had used to develop it, sparking the creation of many tens of thousands of BBSes all over the world.
== All the "had used to" here are in the subordination, happening before its main action.
Note: Passive voice structures and negative sentences are not normal 'action' and thus sometimes don't get into tenses comparison.
Shun Tang
