Pluperfect
The past perfect is a type of verb form, generally treated as one of the tenses in certain languages, used to refer to an action at a time earlier than a time in the past already referred to. Examples in English are: "we had arrived"; "they had written".
The word derives from the Latin plus quam perfectum, "more than perfect". The word "perfect" in this sense means "completed"; it contrasts with the "imperfect", which denotes uncompleted actions or states.
In English grammar, the equivalent of the pluperfect is now often called the past perfect, since it combines past tense with perfect aspect. English also has a past perfect progressive form: "had been writing".
Meaning of the past perfect
The past perfect is traditionally described as a tense; in modern linguistic terminology it may be said to combine tense with grammatical aspect; namely past tense and perfect aspect. It is used to refer to an occurrence that at a past time had already been started,.Bernard Comrie classifies the pluperfect as an absolute-relative tense, because it absolutely establishes a deixis and places the action relative to the deixis.
Examples of the English pluperfect are found in the following sentence :
- A man who for years had thought he had reached the absolute limit of all possible suffering now found that suffering had no limits, and that he could suffer still more, and more intensely.
Examples from various languages
Some languages, like Latin, make pluperfects purely by inflecting the verb, whereas most modern European languages do so using appropriate auxiliary verbs in combination with past participles. The ways in which some languages form the pluperfect are described below.Greek and Latin
verbs had a pluperfect form. An example is ἐτεθύκει, "had sacrificed" – compare the perfect τέθυκε, "has sacrificed". See Ancient Greek verbs. Modern Greek uses auxiliaries to form the pluperfect; examples are given in the table at the end of this article.In Latin, the pluperfect is formed without an auxiliary verb in the active voice, and with an auxiliary verb plus the perfect passive participle in the passive voice. For example, in the indicative mood:
- Pecuniam mercatori dederat.
- Pecunia mercatori data erat.
For detailed information see Latin grammar and Latin conjugation.
English
In English grammar, the pluperfect is formed by combining the auxiliary verb had with the past participle of the main verb, as in had jumped or had written. It is commonly called the past perfect, being a combination of perfect aspect and past tense. It is one of a number of analogously formed perfect constructions, such as the present perfect, future perfect and conditional perfect.Unlike the present perfect, the past perfect can readily be used with an adverb specifying a past time frame for the occurrence. For example, it is incorrect to say *I have done it last Friday. However, there is no such objection to a sentence like "I had done it last Friday", where the past perfect is accompanied by a specification of the time of occurrence.
English also has a past perfect progressive construction, such as had been working. This is the past equivalent of the present perfect progressive, and is used to refer to an ongoing action that continued up to the past time of reference. For example: "It had been raining all night when he awoke."
German
In German, the pluperfect is used in much the same manner, normally in a nachdem sentence. The Plusquamperfekt is formed with the Partizip Perfekt of the full lexical verb, plus the auxiliary verb haben or sein in its preterite form, depending on the full lexical verb in question.When using modal verbs, one can use either the modal verb in the preterite or the auxiliary :
There is a drastic shift of meaning between these variants: the first sentences denote that it "had been necessary" to rain in the past. The second sentence denotes that the speaker assumed that it had rained.
Dutch
In Dutch, the pluperfect is formed similarly as in German: the past participle is combined with the past-tense form of the auxiliary verb hebben or zijn, depending on the full lexical verb: Voordat ik er erg in had, was het al twaalf uur geworden. - Before I noticed, it had become noon already. In addition, pluperfect is sometimes used instead of present perfect: Dat had ik al gezien - lit.: I had seen that . The parenthesized part is implied and, therefore, can be omitted.Swedish
In standard Swedish, the pluperfect is similar to pluperfect in a number of other Germanic languages, but with a slightly different word order, and is formed with the preterite form of ha, i.e. hade, plus the supine form of the main verb: När jag kom dit hade han gått hem - When I arrived there he had gone home.Romance languages
In French, the indicative pluperfect is formed by taking the appropriate form of the imperfect indicative of the auxiliaries avoir or être and adding the past participle, j'avais mangé. Another type of pluperfect can be formed with the appropriate simple past form of the auxiliary: j'eus mangé, though it is rarely used now.In Italian, there are two pluperfects in the indicative mood: the recent pluperfect and the remote pluperfect. The recent pluperfect is formed correspondingly to French by using the imperfect of the appropriate auxiliary verb plus the past participle. For example, Ero affamato perché non avevo mangiato I was hungry because I had not eaten. The remote pluperfect is formed by using the preterite of the appropriate auxiliary verb plus the past participle. In the Italian consecutio temporum, the trapassato remoto should be used for completed actions in a clause subjugated to a clause whose verb is in the preterite.
- Example : "Dopo che lo ebbi trovato, lo vendetti".
- Example : "Dopo che lo avevo trovato, lo vendevo".
In Spanish, there are also two pluperfects, being the pluperfect proper and the so called pretérito anterior. While the former uses the imperfect of the auxiliary verb haber plus the past participle, the latter is formed with the simple past of haber plus the past participle. For example, in pluperfect Había comido cuando mi madre vino 'I had eaten when my mother came', but in pretérito anterior Hube comido cuando mi madre vino 'I had eaten when my mother would come'. This last form however is rarely used.
In Galician and Portuguese, a synthetic pluperfect has been conserved from Latin. For example, Quando cheguei, soube que o meu amigo morrera, 'When I came, I found out that my friend had died'. In Portuguese, however, its use has become mostly literary, and particularly in spoken communication, the pluperfect is usually formed using the auxiliary verb ter, in the imperfect form plus the past participle. For example, Quando cheguei, soube que o meu amigo tinha morrido. A more formal way of expressing the pluperfect uses the verb "haver". For example: Quando cheguei, soube que o meu amigo havia morrido. This periphrastic construction is not permitted in Galician, so Galician uses the synthetic pluperfect exclusively.
In Judeo-Spanish, the Latin pluperfect forms with little alteration have been preserved to express this tense, which is identical in form to the imperfect subjunctive. It has a similar form to the Portuguese, thus the Portuguese example above in Jidyo is, Kuando yegí suve ke mi haver morera 'When I came I knew that my friend had died'. It remains the main spoken form, though in some varieties, similarly to Spanish or Portuguese, the pluperfect is formed using the auxiliary verbs tener or aver plus the past participle. For example, Kuando yegí suve ke mi haver tuve morido or Kuando yegí suve ke mi haver avía morido.
In Romanian, the pluperfect is expressed without any auxiliary words, using a particular form of the verb, originated in the Latin pluperfect subjunctive.. For example, in Când l-am întrebat, el văzuse deja filmul 'When I asked him, he had already seen the movie'. The verb văzuse is in the pluperfect form of a vedea 'to see'. Technically, this form is obtained from the singular third person form of the simple perfect tense by adding specific terminations for each person and number.
However, in northern Transylvania there is a regional way to state the pluperfect. The pluperfect is expressed by combining the auxiliary verb fost or the short version fo with the participle, which is stated in its feminine form. Examples:
o fost foastă = he had been; am fost văzută = I had seen; or fost venită = they had come.
Slavic languages
In some of the Slavic languages the pluperfect has fallen out of use or is rarely used; pluperfect meaning is often expressed using the ordinary past tense, with some adverb or other periphrastic construction to indicate prior occurrence.Ukrainian and Belarusian preserve a distinct pluperfect that is formed by preceding the verb with buv / bula in Ukrainian and byŭ / była in Belarusian. It was and still is used in daily speech, especially in rural areas. Being mostly unused in literature during Soviet times, it is now regaining popularity. Here is an example of usage: Ja vže buv pіšov, až raptom zhadav... and Ja ŭžo byŭ pajšoŭ, kali raptam zhadaŭ I almost had gone already when I recalled...
In Slovenian, the pluperfect is formed with the verb 'to be' in past tense and the participle of the main verb. It is used to denote a completed action in the past before another action or, with a modal verb, a past event that should have happened. Its use is considered archaic and is rarely used even in literary language.
In Polish pluperfect is only found in texts written in or imitating Old Polish, when it was formed with past tense of być "to be" and past participle of the main verb. The person marking is movable, e.g. zrobił byłem ~ zrobiłem był "I had done". Past tense of the adjectival verbs and conditional mood are often wrongly considered pluperfect forms - morphologically, the latter is actually past conditional, rarely used in modern Polish.
In Serbo-Croatian, the pluperfect is constructed with the past tense of the verb to be plus the adjective form of the main verb.
For example: "Ja sam bio učio", which means, "I had been studying".
In Bulgarian, the pluperfect is formed with the imperfect tense of the auxiliary verb съм and the perfect active participle of the main verb.
For examples of pluperfects in Bulgarian and Macedonian, see the table below.
Other languages
In Welsh, the pluperfect is formed without an auxiliary verb, usually by interpolating -as- before the simple past ending: parhasem, "we had remained".In Irish, perfect forms are constructed using the idea of being after doing something. In the pluperfect, bhíomar tar éis imeacht, "we had gone", literally, "we were after going".
In Finnish, the pluperfect is constructed with an auxiliary verb olla 'to be', which is in the past tense. The primary verbs get the past participle endings -nyt/-nut in singular, -neet in plural forms and -ttu/-tty/-tu/-ty in passive forms.
Table of forms
Different perfect construction
In German and French there is an additional way to construct a pluperfect by doubling the perfect tense particles. This is called doubled perfect or super perfect in German and plus past perfect in French. These forms are not commonly used in written language and they are not taught in school.Both languages allow to construct a past tense with a modal verb, for example "I have heard it". This is largely equivalent to the usage in English. The additional perfect tense is constructed by putting the modal verb in the past tense as if being the full verb followed by the actual verb in the past particle mode. The same applies to those verbs which require "to be" as the modal verb for the construction of the past tense.
In spoken language in Southern Germany the doubled perfect construction sometimes replaces the Standard German pluperfect construction.
In France it is uncommon in the Northern regions but it can be found widely in Provençal dialects as well as in other regions around the world. In all regions the doubled pluperfect is uncommon although it is possible - all of these forms emphasize the perfect aspect by extending the modal verb so that a doubled pluperfect would add upon the pluperfect in another part of the speech.