Pluperfect
The pluperfect tense exists in most Indo-European languages, including English. It is a perfective tense which expresses an action completed before another action in the past.
The pluperfect is often called the Past Perfect tense. It is formed using the simple past of the auxiliary verb to have (in all normal circumstances, had) plus the past participle.
An example of the pluperfect tense in English:
- No sooner had I burnt the food than the fire alarm went off. (The fire alarm going off is in the past. The burning of the food is before this.)
In German, the Plusquamperfekt is used in much the same manner, normally in a nachdem sentence. The Plusquamperfekt is formed with the Partizip Perfekt (Partizip II) of the full lexical verb, plus the auxiliary verb haben or sein in its preterite form, depending on the full lexical verb in question. For example: Nachdem ich aufgestanden war, ging ich ins Badezimmer. (After I had gotten up, I went into the bathroom.) Note that in American English this sentence would not normally require the pluperfect, it being less pedantic than German about using the same past tense for two events at different times in the past. In British English, the past perfect tense is normally used, however.
In French, the pluperfect (plus que parfait) is formed from the imperfect tense of the appropriate auxiliary verb (être or avoir) plus the past participle, e.g. Jean avait déjà éteint l'incendie quand les pompiers sont arrivés, John had already put the fire out when the fire brigade arrived.
See also: preterite (simple past), past tense, present tense, future tense, grammatical aspect.
