Podcast 56 - B1 Introduction to the past perfect

Past perfect - structure

Hello, and today I'm going to talk to you about past perfect. Now, the past perfect has the structure of the subject and then the auxiliary verb have, which would be had in the past, plus the past participle. So, for example,

She had arrived;
The police had followed the criminal;
There had been a lot of snow the night before.

And then the question form is just an inversion of the subject and the auxiliary had.

Had she arrived?
Had the police followed the criminal?
Had there been a lot of snow the night before?

And the negative form just takes not after had. So,

She had not arrived.

And that is contracted to hadn't.

She hadn't arrived;
The police hadn't followed the criminal;
There hadn't been a lot of snow the night before.

Past perfect - use

Now, when do we use past perfect? Well, we use it to talk about actions which happen in reverse order. Now, what does that mean? Well, usually, if we talk about what happened this morning, or yesterday, obviously we say the actions in the order that they happened. So this morning,

I got up, I had a shower, I got dressed, then I had breakfast, and then I left for work.

So all these actions which happen in order, are in past simple. But sometimes we talk about the actions in reverse order. Now imagine I go to a party. And I go to a party to see Mary. So when I arrived at the party, oh no! Mary isn't there. So,

When I arrived at the party, Mary had left.

So she left before I arrived. So we use the past perfect when things happen in reverse order [or, rather, we mention them in reverse order]. So you can imagine that I arrived at the party and that Mary [had] left the party before I arrived. So that's an action which goes backwards in time and not forwards in time - like the actions I spoke of earlier: I got up, I had a shower, I got dressed...

Adverbs with past perfect

When we're using past perfect, we often use adverbs like just or already. Just shows that something happened just before - a little time before, a few minutes before the action happened. So an example,

I arrived at the bus stop, but the bus had just left.

It means that the bus left just a few minutes or seconds before I arrived. I arrived at the bus stop, but the bus had just left. I saw it driving down the road. Oh no! I've missed the bus.

The other adverb we often use with past perfect is already.

I ran to the post office to buy a stamp. But when I arrived, the post office had already closed.

Now what that shows is that something happened before I expected it to happen. Before I thought it would happen. I arrived and the post office had already closed.

Okay. Until next time, bye for now.