Form HAVE-EN (+ BE-ING) + -ED
1Same values as the present perfect, but relative to a past reference point
If we focus on a result, we use the past perfect simple; if we focus on the activity, we use the past perfect BE-ING:
- He felt sick because he had drunk three pints of beer. (result → past perfect simple)
- He felt sick because he had been drinking beer. (activity → past perfect BE-ING)
Examples in the past perfect BE-ING
Perceptible traces of an earlier action:
- Ron looked out of the window: it had been snowing.
Unaccomplished and continuity between two past moments (often with for, since and how long):
- They had been playing golf for an hour when the storm broke out.
- He had been living in Paris since 1998 when the war broke out.
- How long had you been working there when they made you redundant?
Unaccomplished and contingent consequence (the question is warranted):
- 'What are you humming?' he asked. She had been humming to herself for a block or so. The past perfect BE-ING warrants the question asked and measures the duration of the process at the past moment when asked occurs.
Unaccomplished and the speaker's critical comment on the subject:
- He was drunk and had been singing for half an hour when he stumbled against his wife and vomited. Unaccomplished value, plus the speaker's subjective comment on the subject. It is also, with for + duration, an assessment from the past moment when the processes stumble and vomit take place.
Examples in the past perfect simple
Accomplished and notional logical consequence:
- He noticed she had repaired the car. The process notice highlights the consequence / resulting state of an accomplished action referred to by the process repair, at the past speech situation where notice takes place.
Accomplished and notional logical consequence + explanation:
- I impressed Tom, because I had published a book. (consequence / result of one past event on another)
- He couldn't tell me the time yesterday. He had lost his watch. (explanation)
Example combining both forms
One in the past perfect simple (→ assessment relative to a past moment), the other in the past perfect BE-ING (→ contingent consequence as perceptible traces, with explanatory and deductive values).
- "I have faith in all black people," Snackman said. "Even J.B.?" asked Jordan, who hadn't talked to J.B. since the locker room confrontation; J.B. had been avoiding him.
For talk: an assessment value from the past moment when the process asked occurred, with a negative state stretching from the locker room confrontation to the moment when the past process asked takes place.
For avoid: an explanatory/deductive comment on J. B.'s behaviour (this explains the negative state).
2Anteriority — second-degree past (flashback, analepsis)
- I met him in 2019. He had arrived in England ten years before.
- When his parents came to visit, he had taken them aside.
Anteriority is frequent but not fundamental: the preterite can sometimes suffice:
- All in all, it sounded like such a good idea that the previous night, when his parents came to visit at the hospital, he had taken them aside and broached it to them.
3The speaker's discursive strategy to comment on a particular relation between an action in the preterite and another in the past perfect
Stressing the subject's accomplishment
The speaker brings the subject's accomplishment to the fore before returning to the main narrative line in the preterite.
- That afternoon they had been passing through the beechwood when they heard an unusual noise.
Stressing the concomitance of two events
The speaker comments on the concomitance of two events. It is the same period, but one is in the preterite and the other in the past perfect because of this commenting value.
- The day of my father's burial had also been my nineteenth birthday.
4Indirect speech — sequence of tenses
Direct speech in the preterite → we refer back to the process itself
Indirect: He had been tidying my tent and he had taken my dirty clothes to the laundry.
Direct speech in the present perfect → resulting state, assessment or comment
Free indirect: Had she been crying? he wondered.
5Modal value — unreal past / counterfactual
- I wish I had known!
- If you had asked me, I would have lent it to you.
- She was breathless as though she had been running.
6Tentative use — unfulfilled expectation / politeness
- Unfulfilled expectation We had hoped she would sing, but her voice is not cooperating.
- Unfulfilled expectationI had intended to go there, but the train has been cancelled.
- PolitenessWe had wanted to ask you if you'd be the baby's godmother.