Practice Makes Perfect Spanish Verb Tenses, Second ... - Ktooba.com

The past perfect tense ·18·
TENSE Past perfect
TIME Refers to the remote past or to actions that occurred prior to
a specifi c point in time
KEY PHRASES “Had” (“I had traveled,” “We had studied”)
STRUCTURE Compound tense: haber conjugated in the imperfect
past participle
Th e past perfect tense is a compound tense, which means that it requires an auxiliary
verb followed by a past participle. We form the past perfect tense in the same
manner in English, using the auxiliary “had,” as in “You had written the letter” and
“She had bought three suits,” for all persons.
We use the past perfect tense (sometimes called the pluperfect tense) when
referring to an action that occurred prior to something else. When using this
tense, there is always a stated or implied cutoff point. Consider the following
sentence.
I had taken three pictures before realizing that there wasn’t any fi lm
in the camera.
Th e action, taking pictures, stopped at the cutoff point of discovering that there
wasn’t any fi lm. Th e act of taking pictures, in a sense, is hidden behind the discovery.
In this sense there is always something that stops whatever action is referred
to in the past perfect tense.
Th e past perfect diff ers from the present perfect in that sentences in the present
perfect are still true: Th e cutoff point is now. In the past perfect, the cutoff
point is at some time in the past.
Formation of the past perfect
Because the past perfect tense is a compound tense, it is formed with an auxiliary
verb and a past participle. To form verbs in this tense, fi rst conjugate haber in the
imperfect tense.
haber to have (auxiliary)
había habíamos
habías habíais
había habían
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