Past continous vs. past perfect continous

Question

hey guys I want to know the difference between past perfect continous and past continous.like:He had been working 3 years for that companyHe was working 3 years for that companythanks!

Vorpar · Accepted Answer

Both are used along with another action or time reference. In that sort of sentence, past perfect describes an action that happens first. The other action would take place at the end of those 3 years and it implies that he was still working for that company after the other action.

Past continuous gives a timeframe for when he was working there, and other actions during those 3 years can be described.

CalifJim · Answer

egerol1the difference between past perfect continous and past continous.

There are so many uses of each of the tenses of English that it would be impossible in a single post to give you all the differences, even for just two of them. Let's just concentrate on the two sentences you wrote.

Consider that the reference time in a present perfect is the present.
He has been working for that company for three years.
Here the working continues from three years ago until the present.

..............[ --- working --- ]X=R.................. (X is the present moment.)
< - three years - > (X=R, the reference time.)
___________________________________

The reference time is in the past if you use the past perfect.
He had been working for that company for three years.
Here the working continued from three years before the reference time until the reference time in the past.

.........[ --- working --- ]R..............X............ (X is the present moment.)
< - three years - > (R is the reference time.)

So you can see that "had been working" is simply the past of "has been working". The reference time changes, but everything else is the same. Use "has" when the three years ends now; use "had" when the three years ends in the past.

___________________________________

He was working 3 years for that company.

This sentence is somewhat anomalous. Here's why: The past continuous typically denotes an open-ended time period during which some activity took place. Yet the mention of three years makes the time period closed. By "closed" I mean that we know when the period started and when it ended, and these points are supposed to coincide with the beginning and ending of the "working". This kind of coincidence is not normally expressed with the past continuous tense. Most often, the past continuous is used with the mention of an event that happened during some indefinite "open" time period, like this:

He was working for that company when his son was born.

He was working for that company when the recession began.
He was working for that company (during) the year the hurricane struck.

..............[ -- working -- ] ..................X
.................! son born ! ...................... (! event !)

.................! recession ! ......................
.................! hurricane ! ......................

CJ

Past continous vs. past perfect continous

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