‘function of past perfect’
Hello, everyone,
“I was sitting outside a restaurant in Spain one summer evening, waiting for dinner. The aroma of the kitchens excited my taste buds. My future meal was coming to me in the form of molecules drifting through the air, too small for my eyes to see but detected by my nose. The ancient Greeks first came upon the idea of atoms this way; the smell of baking bread suggested to them that small particles of bread existed beyond vision. The cycle of weather reinforced this idea: a puddle of water on the ground gradually dries out, disappears, and then falls later as rain. They reasoned that there must be particles of water that turn into steam, form clouds, and fall to earth, so that the water is conserved even though the little particles are too small to see. My paella in Spain had inspired me, four thousand years too late, to take the credit for atomic theory.”
*source;
About the past perfect tense ‘had inspired’ in the last sentence I wonder why the author used this tense instead of the simple past ‘inspired’, since the basic tense is the simple past through the whole paragraph. I guess the author’s intention would be that since his experience with ‘paella in Spain’ is not a recent one but a past one, he intentionally backshifted ‘have inspired’ into ‘had inspired’.
I would appreciate if you share your opinion about my guess.
Top answer
deepcosmos I guess the author’s intention would be that since his experience with ‘paella in Spain’ is not a recent one but a past one, he intentionally backshifted ‘ have inspired ’ into ‘ had inspired ’. Correct. Saying the experience 'has inspired me' brings the experience into the present context.
- deepcosmos I guess the author’s intention would be that since his experience with ‘paella in Spain’ is not a recent one but a past one, he intentionally backshifted ‘ have inspired ’ into ‘ had inspired ’.
- Correct.
- Saying the experience 'has inspired me' brings the experience into the present context.
- But the present context is not the experience of smelling paella; it's the experience of telling a story about what happened 'one summer evening'.
- ".
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deepcosmosI guess the author’s intention would be that since his experience with ‘paella in Spain’ is not a recent one but a past one, he intentionally backshifted ‘have inspired’ into ‘had inspired’.
Correct. Saying the experience 'has inspired me' brings the experience into the present context. But the present context is not
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