Pluperfect
The pluperfect, usually called past perfect in English, characterizes certain verb forms and grammatical tenses involving an action from an antecedent point in time. Examples in English are: "we had arrived" before the game began; "they had been writing" when the bell rang.
The word is derived 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 pluperfect is now usually 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 pluperfect
The pluperfect 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 :
Here, "had thought" and "had reached" are examples of the pluperfect. They refer to an event, which takes place before another event, that is itself a past event, referred to using the past tense. The pluperfect is needed to make it clear that the first event is placed even earlier in the past.
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.Greek
verbs had a pluperfect form. An example is ἐτεθύκει, "had sacrificed" – compare the perfect τέθυκε, "has sacrificed". Modern Greek uses auxiliaries to form the pluperfect; examples are given in the table at the end of this article.Latin and Romance languages
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.
French
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.| English | French | Tense | Notes |
| I went to the library | Je suis allé à la bibliothèque | Passé composé | "suis" is the present conjugation of "être" |
| I had already gone to the library when you arrived at my place | J'étais déjà allé à la bibliothèque quand tu es arrivé chez moi | Plus-que-parfait | In the first clause, "étais" is the imperfect conjugation of "être" |
Italian
In Italian, there are two pluperfects in the indicative mood: the recent pluperfect and the remote pluperfect. The recent pluperfect is formed analogously 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".
Judeo-Spanish
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 below, in Judeo-Spanish, 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.Portuguese and Galician
In Portuguese and Galician, 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.Romanian
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.
Sicilian and Pantesco
In Sicilian, the pluperfect is formed in the standard manner for modern Romance languages, using the verb "to have" inflected into the imperfect tense and a past participle which is invariable according to person and number. However, in the Pantesco dialect of the language, an alternative structure using the verb "to be" is found. In this structure, the 3rd person singular imperfect of the verb to be is used to indicate the pluperferct, which is followed the preterite, conjugated for number and person. This structure has similarities to the pluperfect in Maltese, and therefore it appears likely that the Pantesco form was influenced by the Arabic dialect formerly spoken on Pantelleria.Spanish
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. Sometimes the imperfect subjunctive with '-ar' termination can be used with a pluperfect sense in subordinated phrases, but it is neither normative nor recommended.Germanic languages
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.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, often used in its contracted form d, as in I'd jumped. 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, especially in a context that clearly provides for a connection with another past event, either specified or implied.
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." It is also commonly used to refer to actions that had led to consequences in the past.
The past perfect form also has some uses in which it does not directly refer to an actual past event. These are generally in condition clauses and some other dependent clauses referring to hypothetical circumstances, as well as certain expressions of wish.