Lesson T Main?
Lesson T - Grammar Music
You are pretty good now....You can say most things now, and have a good verb form to do it. But what
if you did something in the past, BEFORE you did something else in the
past?
Give me a break.
No seriously, say you had a marriage, and a child, both in the past. Now someone
says your son Alfredo came before you married Ricardo. You want
badly to say: Before Alfredo came, I had married Ricardo. You
would do that with the Past Perfect. (Well, none of us were
perfect in the past, but that's another story.) Let's look at that sentence
again:
Before Alfredo (S) came (V2), I (S) had (HAD)
married (V3) Ricardo.
(Note that all persons use the word HAD
in the Past Perfect.)
So you see why the Past Perfect tense is necessary. A lot. (We
live in several pasts and several futures when
we think and talk.)
We use Past Perfect tense if we are
talking about the past and one event happened BEFORE the
others. It had already happened.
With Past Perfect, you can often use the word
"already."
({S + V2} + S + HAD + V3)
Before Alfredo came, I had ALREADY married Ricardo.
Note the Time Clause
{S + V2 above}.
Here's another, without a Time Clause.
(S + HAD + V3)
We had built our new house by the next winter.Now let's do one so you get the feel of it:
({S + V2} + S + HAD + V3)
left arrived when has she already
had town
I
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