Fix the mistake: Comprehensive Tense Review

Past Perfect — The Pluperfect and Completion Uses

The past perfect had + past participle expresses an event that occurred even earlier than a certain point in the past (the pluperfect), or completion, experience, or continuation up to that point.

Basic Rules

The four uses of the past perfect:
① Pluperfect (past before the past): shows an event that occurred even earlier than a point in the past “When I arrived at the station, the train had already left. (When I arrived at the station, the train had already left.)”
② Completion: shows that something had been completed by a certain point in the past “By the time he came, I had finished my homework. (By the time he came, I had finished my homework.)”
③ Experience: shows that something had been experienced by a certain point in the past “I had never seen such a beautiful sunset before that day.”
④ Continuation: shows that something had continued up to a certain point in the past “She had lived in Tokyo for ten years before she moved to Osaka.”
The past perfect must have a certain point in the past (the reference point) somewhere in the sentence. Without a reference point, its meaning becomes unclear.

Points to Note

① When the past tense alone is sufficient: When the order of events is clear, the past perfect is unnecessary. If the sequence is clear through and / then, as in “I got up, washed my face, and ate breakfast,” the past tense alone is fine.
② Signals for the past perfect: by the time / before / when / after / until + a point in the past. When there is a reference-point clause, the main verb takes the past perfect, as in “By the time he arrived, the meeting had begun.”
③ Be careful not to confuse it with the past perfect subjunctive: if + subject + had + past participle means “if〜” (an unreal past condition), which is different (Course 8).
④ Sequence of tenses: past-tense main clause + past perfect in reported speech. “He said (that) he had finished it. (He said that he had finished it.)” The main clause is said in the past, and the that clause was originally finished in the past, but sequence of tenses changes it to the past perfect had finished.

Practice

1. Translate “When I returned home, my mother had already finished cooking dinner” into English.
2. Translate “He had never been abroad before coming to Tokyo” into English.
3. Translate “When the meeting began, he had already been there for two hours” into English.