The Past Perfect or Past Perfect Simple (Past Perfect or Past Perfect Simple) is a tense used to express actions past that happened before another action that had occurred in the past.
In this tense it is common for sentences to be formed by some adverbs.
The most used are:
- When (if)
- just (just; just)
- already (already)
- by the time (at the moment)
- ever (already; sometime)
- never (never)
- before (before)
- after (after)
Examples :
- I had already cleaned the house when my mother arrived . (I had already cleaned the house when my mom arrived.)
- She had just left by the time he arrived . (She had just left when he arrived.)
- They did not come with us because they had visited this museum before. (They did not come with us because they had visited this museum before.)
- He asked me if I had ever been to Germany . (He asked me if I had ever been to Germany.)
Past Perfect Formation
The Past Perfect is formed by an auxiliary verb to have conjugated in Simple Past (HAD) + Past Participle of the main verb.
Attention! (Pay Attention! )
All regular verbs follow a conjugation model. In the past participle, flexions are always formed by adding the endings –d , –ed or –ied
Irregular verbs, however, do not follow any conjugation model or rule. Therefore, the best way to know your inflections is to consult a table of verbs.
Examples :
- Verb to dance (regular) – past participle: dance d
- Verb to play (regular) – past participle: play ed
- Verb to study (regular) – past participle: stud ied
- Verb to go (irregular) – past participle: gone
- Verb to be (irregular) – past participle: been
See also: Irregular Verbs in English
Affirmative ( affirmative form )
Affirmative phrases in Past Perfect Simple are formed as follows:
Subject + verb to have no S imple Past (had) + main verb in Past Participle + complement
Example :
You had changed your clothes before the end of the party. (You had changed your clothes before the party was over).
Negative form ( form negative )
In negative sentences it is necessary to add the not after the auxiliary verb:
Subject + verb to have in Simple Past ( had ) + not + main verb in Past Particip le + complement
Example :
You had not changed your clothes before the end of the party. (You hadn’t changed your clothes before the party was over.)
Note : the negative form can also be written in the contracted form: had + not = hadn’t
Example :
You hadn’t changed your clothes before the end of the party. (You hadn’t changed your clothes before the party was over.)
Interrogative form ( form interrogative )
To ask questions in Past Perfect Simple , the auxiliary verb must be used at the beginning of the sentence, before the subject:
Verb to have in Simple Past + subject + main verb in Past Participle + complement
Example :
Had you changed your clothes before the end of the party? (Had you changed your clothes before the party was over?)
Past Perfect Simple x Past Perfect Continuous
In Past Perfect Tense there are two ways to express past actions. Let’s see below each one of them:
Past Perfect Simple
It is used to indicate actions in the past that occurred before another action in the past.
The Past Perfect Simple is formed by an auxiliary verb to have conjugated in Simple Past ( HAD ) + past participle of the main verb.
Examples :
- I had finished the job when my boss arrived. (I had finished the job when my boss arrived.) – AFFIRMATIVE FORM
- I had not finished the job when my boss arrived. (I wasn’t done when my boss arrived.) – NEGATIVE FORM
- Had I finished the job when my boss arrived? (Had I finished the job when my boss arrived?) – INTERROGATIVE FORM
See also: Regular and Irregular Verbs in English
Past Perfect Continuous
It is used to indicate the continuity of actions in the past that occurred before another action in the past.
The Past Perfect Continuous is formed by the verb to have conjugated in Simple Past ( HAD ) + verb to be conjugated in the past participle (Been) + gerund the main verb.
Examples :
- I had been waiting for two hours when she arrived . (I had been waiting for two hours when she arrived.) – AFFIRMATIVE FORM
- I had not been waiting for two hours when she arrived . (I hadn’t been waiting for two hours when she arrived.) – NEGATIVE FORM
- Had I been waiting for two hours when she arrived? (I had been waiting for two hours when she arrived?) – INTERROGATIVE FORM
Exercises ( Exercises )
1. (Fundatec / 2015)
Press me! The button that lies to you
The tube pulls in to a busy station along the London Underground’s Central Line. It is early evening on a Thursday. A gaggle of commuters assembles inside and outside the train, waiting for the doors to open. A moment of impatience grips one man who is nearest to them. He pushes the square, green-rimmed button which says “open”. A second later, the doors satisfyingly part. The crowds mingle, jostling on and off the train, and their journeys continue. Yet whether or not the traveler knew it, his finger had no effect on the mechanism.
Some would call this a “placebo button” – a button which, objectively speaking, provides no control over a system, but which to the user at least is psychologically fulfilling to push. It turns out that there are plentiful examples of buttons which do nothing and indeed other technologies which are purposefully designed to deceive us. But here’s the really surprising thing. Many increasingly argue that we actually benefit from the illusion that we are in control of something – even when, from the observer’s point of view, we’re not.
In 2013, BBC News Magazine discovered that pedestrian crossings all over the UK were the wellspring of placebo buttons. A crossing in central London had programmed intervals for red and green lights, for example. Pushing the button would only impact the length of these intervals between midnight and 7am. ___ several other cities during busy periods, the crossings were programmed to alternate their signals at a specific rate. The buttons did nothing, but a “wait” light would still come on when they were pressed and, yes, people still pressed them presumably believing that their actions were having an effect.
Certain psychologists would argue that the buttons were indeed having an effect – just not ___ the traffic lights themselves. Instead the effect is in the commuter’s minds. To understand this you have to go back to the early 1970s. At that time, psychologist Ellen Langer, now a professor ____ Harvard, was a Yale graduate student. During a five-card draw game of poker she dealt one set of cards in a haphazard order. “Everybody,” she says, “got crazy. The cards somehow belonged to the other person even though you couldn’t see any of them. ” Langer decided to find out more about the way people regulated the playing of such games. She went to a casino where, at the slot machines, she found gamblers with elaborate ways of pulling the lever.At another time a “highly rational” fellow student tried to explain to her why tossing a pair of dice could be done in a certain way to affect the numbers which came up. “People believed that all of these behaviors were going to increase the probability of their winning,” she comments.
In 1975, she wrote a paper where she described the significance of these beliefs and coined a term for the effect that they had on people: the “illusion of control”. However, instead of framing this as an irrational delusion, Langer described the effect as a positive thing. “Feeling you have control over your world is a desirable state,” she explains. When it comes to those deceptive traffic light buttons, Langer says there could be a whole host of reasons why the placebo effect might be counted as a good thing. “Doing something is better than doing nothing, so people believe,” she says. “And when you go to press the button your attention is on the activity at hand. If I’m just standing at the corner, I may not even see the light change, or I might only catch the last part of the change, in which case I could put myself in danger. ”
Also, if pedestrians wait together at the crossing and a few press the button impatiently, that creates a sense of togetherness with strangers which might otherwise be absent. All of these things may be taken as positive impacts on our mental state, and even socially reinforcing. It’s something to think about next time you cross the street.
In the sentence “A crossing in central London had programmed intervals for red and green lights”, the underlined verbal locution is in the ________________. If we put it in the present perfect continuous, it would be written as ______________.
Mark the alternative that correctly and respectively fill in the blanks above.
a) past perfect – had been programming
b) past perfect – has been programming
c) present perfect – have been programmed
d) present perfect – have being programmed
e) simple past – has programming
Answer
Correct alternative: b) past perfect – has been programming
The letter b) is the correct alternative because “had programmed” follows the formation structure of Past Perfect : had + main verb (in this case to program ) in Past Participle ( programmed ).
For the highlighted part of the sentence to pass to the Present Perfect Continuous , we must follow the following structure:
Present Perfect of the verb to be ( has been ) + main verb in the gerund ( programming ).
2. Which of the phrases below is not in Past Perfect Simple :
a) Had you been waiting long before the airplane arrived?
b) You had not studied English before you moved to Brazil.
c) We had that car for fifteen years before it broke down.
d) Before I came here, I had spoken to Jonh.
e) He had written a letter to Carlos.
Answer
Correct alternative: a) Had you been waiting long before the airplane arrived?
Alternative a) has two tenses but none of them is Past Perfect: 1) Past Perfect Continuous ( had been waiting ) and 2) Simple Past (arrived).
3. Write the sentence below in Past Perfect Simple in the affirmative , negative and interrogative forms :
I watched a good film this weekend .
Answer
AFFIRMATIVE FORM:
I had watched a good film this weekend.
To form affirmative sentences in Past Perfect, just follow the following structure:
Subject + verb to have in Simple Past (had) + main verb in Past Participle + complement
NEGATIVE FORM:
I had not watched a good film this weekend .
To form negative sentences in Past Perfect, just follow the following structure:
Subject + verb to have in Simple Past (had) + not + main verb in Past Participle + complement
INTERROGATIVE FORM:
Had I watched a good film this weekend?
To form interrogative sentences in Past Perfect, just follow the following structure:
Verb to have in Simple Past (had) + subject + main verb in Past Participle + complement
4. Conjugate the verb to have in the affirmative form of Past Perfect Simple :
Answer
I had had
You had had
He / She / It had had
We had had
You had had
They had had
To form affirmative sentences in Past Perfect, just follow the following structure:
Subject + verb to have in Simple Past (had) + main verb in Past Participle + complement.
It is important to note that in Past Perfect, the verbal inflections are the same for all personal pronouns.