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Samuraibabes Posted 11 years ago
Grammar

Past Perfect Continuous before Past Perfect

Is it OK if I say :
"We had always been playing together until we had gotten seperated"
An answer followed by it's explanation would be very helpful.
  

Top answer

The past perfect tense needs a past reference to refer to the time before the reference. In your sentence, the reference point is the separation, and the playing together happened before that point. The first problem is that you've tried to establish that reference point with the past perfect tense ("had gotten separated"), which of course, wants its own past reference point, and English syntax isn't up to the job.

— Deadrat

  • The past perfect tense needs a past reference to refer to the time before the reference.
  • In your sentence, the reference point is the separation, and the playing together happened before that point.
  • The first problem is that you've tried to establish that reference point with the past perfect tense ("had gotten separated"), which of course, wants its own past reference point, and English syntax isn't up to the job.
  • , the separation).
  • That make the "always" unnecessary.
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5 Answers
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The past perfect tense needs a past reference to refer to the time before the reference. In your sentence, the reference point is the separation, and the playing together happened before that point. The first problem is that you've tried to establish that reference point with the past perfect tense ("had gotten separated"), which of course, wants its own past reference point, and English syntax
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samuraibabesIs it OK if I say : "We had always been playing together until we had gotten separated"
No. Actually, it's rather difficult to assign meaning to your sentence. The word 'always' seems out of place.

This works, however:

We had been playing together until we got separated.
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Ok I think I already get it now about what you mean. Another thing I really want to know after I've posted this question is is there a chance/possibility to describe 'habitual' things in past perfect tense like we often use in simple present tense and simple past for past habits ?

Simple Illustration :
Present habit : I like eating cakes.
Past Habit: I liked eating cakes
Past
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samuraibabesWould it be weird if I said it "I'd liked eating cakes" ?
No. You can do that, though I can't guarantee it works for all verbs. What would be weird (or maybe I should say somewhat rare) is finding a situation in the real world where you would need to say such a thing.

There are some alternat
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Thanks guys for helping me Emotion: smile
Your answers have given me so much clue on how to use past perfect correctly.
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