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Anonymous Posted 11 years ago
Grammar
why past perfect?
Please, help me to understand why in the following sentence the past perfect tense is used:
"In 1884 Lewis Waterman had patented the fountain pen, giving him the sole rights to manufacture it."
"In 1884 Lewis Waterman had patented the fountain pen, giving him the sole rights to manufacture it."
Top answer
We cannot give you a satisfactory answer with just one sentence to go on. It depends on a wider context.
- We cannot give you a satisfactory answer with just one sentence to go on.
- It depends on a wider context.
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4 Answers
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We cannot give you a satisfactory answer with just one sentence to go on. It depends on a wider context.
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I'm sorry, here you are....
"In fact this 'new' pen was not new after all, and was just the latest development in a long serch for the best way to deliver ink to paper. In 1884 Lewis Waterman had patented the fountain pen, giving him the sole rights to manufacture it."
So the usage of past perfect could be prompted by the previous text?
"In fact this 'new' pen was not new after all, and was just the latest development in a long serch for the best way to deliver ink to paper. In 1884 Lewis Waterman had patented the fountain pen, giving him the sole rights to manufacture it."
So the usage of past perfect could be prompted by the previous text?
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Yes. Indeed we need all this context:
One chilly autumn morning in 1945, five thousand shoppers crowded the pavements outside Gimbels Department Store in New York City. The day before, Gimbels had taken out a full-page newspaper advertisement in the New York Times, announcing the sale of the first ballpoint pens in the United States. The new writing instrument was heralded as
One chilly autumn morning in 1945, five thousand shoppers crowded the pavements outside Gimbels Department Store in New York City. The day before, Gimbels had taken out a full-page newspaper advertisement in the New York Times, announcing the sale of the first ballpoint pens in the United States. The new writing instrument was heralded as
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AnonymousSo the usage of past perfect could be prompted by the previous text?In my experience that's almost always how it works. Many grammar books show only artificial examples where the time relationships are condensed into a single sentence merely to give a general idea of how the past perfect works without having to quote long texts.
CJ
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