PAST PERFECT SIMPLE

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ONLY PAST PERFECT

PAST PERFECT SIMPLE AND PAST SIMPLE

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ONLY PAST PERFECT

PAST PERFECT SIMPLE AND PAST SIMPLE

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DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PAST PERFECT SIMPLE AND PAST SIMPLE

These two tenses are both used to talk about things that happened in the past. However we use past perfect to talk about something that happened before another action in the past, which is usually expressed by the past simple.

EXAMPLES

I had argued with my friend before I came here

I had eaten lamb before I went to the cinema

I hadn't been to Australia

I hadn't had dinner yet.

Had you eaten frog legs before

Had you bought that t-shirt?

USE

The past perfect is used in the part of the sentence that explains the condition (the if-clause). Most often, the reason to write a verb in the past perfect tense is to show that it happened before other actions in the same sentence that are described by verbs in the simple past tense.

FORM

POSITIVE: Subject+had+past participle

NEGATIVE: Subject+had/hadn't+past participle

INTERROGATIVE: Had+subject+past participle