Questions about past perfect (과거완료)

[유진승]

Here I introduce Shane's very helpful question about the past perfect. It's a bit long, but very well worth reading.

Shane asks:

First of all, I think I need to provide some contexts.

Harry Stanford, the legend in the business circle, is a Janus-faced man. One Standford is a great benefactor who spends millions of dollars for charity, and the other Standord is a harsh, violent father who shows no affection toward his wife and three children. One day, Stanford has an affair with Rosemary, the governess and his wife gets to know that. The following day, she commits suicide.

Now, I'll show you what the book says.

"Your mother had an accident, Tyler."

It was a lie. His father had killed her. She had committed suicide because of his father and his affair with Rosemary. The newspapers had been filled with the story. It was a scandal that rocked Boston, and the tabloids took full advantage of it. There was no way to keep the news from the Stanford children. Their classmates made their lives hell. In just twenty-four hours, the three young children had lost the two people they loved most. And it was their father who was to blame.

"I don't care if he is our father." Kendall sobbed. "I hate him."

"Me, too!"

"Me, too!"

They thought about running away, but they had nowhere to go. They decided to rebel. Tyler was delegated to talk to him.

"We want a different father. We don't want you."

Harry Stanford had looked at him and said, coldly, " I think we can arrange that."

Three weeks later, they were all shipped off to different boarding schools.

1. The newspaper had been filled with the story.

-> Considering the sequence of the events, I believe the simple past tense might be better here. The affair happened first, and the newspapers got to know that later. I don't see why 'had' was used.

2. The three young children had lost the two they loved most.

-> Losing their mother and loving their mother. Of the two, which do you think comes first? I'd say loving their mother comes first. Maybe they loved their mother from birth. Her suicide is the lastest event. The sentence is quite beyond me. I would have said,

"The three young children lost the two they had loved most." What do you think?

3. Harry Stanford had looked at him and said, coldly...

-> This is an example of a continuous sequence of events, where no "had" is necessary (for instance, "I woke up and turned on my computer"). However, 'had' there makes me feel like Stanford's reply occurred earlier than Tylor's remark (We don't want you).  I'm puzzled.

Jin answers:

PP (Past perfect) is used to signify i) a previous time or ii) perfective tense in the past. An important thing about "previous time" is you don't have to count all the events that happen and put them in a temporal order to determine which is previous to which. This kind of thing happens only in mathmatics and no one uses language like that.

1. The newspaper had been filled with the story.

Here, "had" is used probably to signify that "filled with the story" occurred before the time when the remark "Your mother had an accident, Tyler" was made. It doesn't matter when the other events occurred. When you want to highlight this before-and-after relationship between any two events, you can use PP.

But surely, you don't have to use PP if you don't need to highlight the time relationship or if it is clear even without using PP.

2. The three young children had lost the two they loved most.

This is a case of perfect tense in the past.

Love: If you say "I loved you", it means you don't love her now. So no matter when you started loving her, you must say "I love you" if you still love her.

So to put it in the present tense: "The three children have lost the one they love most." Here, "have lost" means they lost her and are now without her --> continuation of the result to the present (현재완료의 결과적 용법). And the children still love her. Put this in the past tense and you get sentence 2.

3. Harry Stanford had looked at him and said, coldly.

Here, the PP initially struck me as a bit odd, but the reason is that his looking occurred before saying, that is, he was not looking at him any more when he was saying things to him. It's cold when someone talks to you without looking at you.

[Shane]

You've answered exactly what I was curious about, sir. Thank you indeed. I don't think any native could give me a better account than that of yours.^^*

[유진승]

I think an important thing to keep realizing is that English CANNOT be mathmatics, but this mistaken notion is very hard to remove because of the way we've learned English. // Thank you for the good question. I think I will use your example to make a lesson on PP.

[Young]

wow~~ Shane must not be a passive learner^^ thank you for your questions and thank Mr.Jin for the great comments!