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## UNIT NINETEEN The past perfect tense 

## Use of the past perfect 

1 The past perfect (or pluperfect) normally indicates a past event which happened before another past event, as in the English ‘I had fi nished  shower- ing when I heard the doorbell’, ‘By the time it fi nished, I had had  enough.’ It is thus normally used in sentences where there is another past tense, or some other reference to a past event: 

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It is also often used on its own, where a more recent event is referred to, or implied, in the context: 

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2 Sometimes, when the past perfect is used on its own, the event nearer to the present is purely implicit: 

