Some languages, like
Latin, make pluperfects purely by
inflecting the verb, whereas most modern European languages do so using appropriate
auxiliary verbs in combination with
past participles.
Greek Ancient Greek verbs had a pluperfect form (called , "more than completed"). An example is , "had sacrificed" – compare the perfect , "has sacrificed". Modern Greek uses auxiliaries to form the pluperfect; examples are given in the table at the end of this article.
Latin and Romance languages In
Latin, the pluperfect () is formed without an auxiliary verb in the
active voice, and with an auxiliary verb plus the perfect passive participle in the
passive voice. For example, in the
indicative mood: • ("He
had given money to the merchant"; active) • ("Money
had been given to the merchant"; passive) The subjunctive mood is formed similarly (in this case and respectively). In many cases an
ablative absolute phrase, consisting of a noun and perfect participle in the ablative case, may be used in place of a pluperfect; for example: , "When money had been given (more literally: Money having been given) to the merchant, the buyer left."
French In
French, the indicative pluperfect (
Plus-que-parfait, "more than perfect") is formed by taking the appropriate form of the imperfect indicative of the auxiliaries
avoir or
être and adding the past participle, ''j'avais mangé
. Another type of pluperfect (passé antérieur
, "past anterior") can be formed with the appropriate simple past form of the auxiliary: j'eus mangé'', though it is rarely used now.
Italian In
Italian, there are two pluperfects in the indicative mood: the recent pluperfect (
trapassato prossimo) and the remote pluperfect (
trapassato remoto). The recent pluperfect is formed analogously to French by using the
imperfect of the appropriate auxiliary verb (
essere or
avere) plus the past participle. For example:
Ero affamato perché non avevo mangiato, "I was hungry because I had not eaten
". The remote pluperfect is formed by using the
preterite of the appropriate auxiliary verb plus the past participle. In the Italian consecutio temporum, the
trapassato remoto should be used for completed actions in a clause subjugated to a clause whose verb is in the preterite. • Example (remote pluperfect): "Dopo che lo ebbi trovato, lo vendetti". (After I had found it, I sold it) • Example (recent pluperfect): "Dopo che lo avevo trovato, lo vendevo". (After I had found it, I would sell it) The second example may refer to an event that happened continuously or habitually in the past. (I.e. "After I used to find it, I would sell it" OR "After I would find it, I would sell it"). The first example, being the preterite, refers only to actions completed once in the remote past, or distant past.
Judeo-Spanish In
Judeo-Spanish, the Latin pluperfect forms with little alteration have been preserved (e.g. final /m/ and /t/ are dropped) to express this tense (
pluskuamperfekto), which is identical in form to the imperfect subjunctive. It has a similar form to the Portuguese, thus, the Portuguese example below, in Judeo-Spanish, is:
Kuando yegí suve ke mi haver morera, 'When I came I knew that my friend had died'. It remains the main spoken form, though in some varieties, similarly to Spanish or Portuguese, the pluperfect is formed using the auxiliary verbs
tener or
aver plus the past participle. For example,
Kuando yegí suve ke mi haver tuve morido or
Kuando yegí suve ke mi haver avía morido.
Portuguese and Galician In
Portuguese and
Galician, a synthetic pluperfect (
mais-que-perfeito or
antepretérito) has been conserved from Latin. For example,
Quando cheguei, soube que o meu amigo morrera, 'When I came, I found out that my friend had died'. In Portuguese, however, its use has become mostly literary, and particularly in spoken communication, the pluperfect is usually formed using the auxiliary verb
ter, in the imperfect form (tinha tinhas tinha tínhamos tínheis tinham) plus the past participle. For example,
Quando cheguei, soube que o meu amigo tinha morrido. A more formal way of expressing the pluperfect uses the verb "haver". For example:
Quando cheguei, soube que o meu amigo havia morrido. This periphrastic construction is not permitted in Galician, so Galician uses the synthetic pluperfect exclusively.
Romanian In
Romanian, the pluperfect (
mai mult ca perfect) is expressed without any auxiliary words, using a particular form of the verb, originated in the Latin
pluperfect subjunctive (compare Italian imperfect subjunctive
Sembrava che Elsa non venisse with Romanian pluperfect
Părea că Elsa nu venise). For example, in
Când l-am întrebat, el văzuse deja filmul 'When I asked him, he had already seen the movie'. The verb
văzuse is in the pluperfect form of
a vedea 'to see'. Technically, this form is obtained from the singular third person form of the
simple perfect tense by adding specific terminations for each person and number. However, in northern Transylvania there is a regional way to state the pluperfect (that may reflect the German influence). The pluperfect is expressed by combining the auxiliary verb
fost or the short version
fo (= "was" in English or "war" in German) with the participle, which (quite difficult to explain) is stated in its feminine form. Examples:
o fost foastă (or ''o fo' foastă
) = he had been; am fost văzută
= I had seen; or fost venită'' = they had come.
Sicilian and Pantesco In
Sicilian, the pluperfect is formed in the standard manner for modern Romance languages, using the verb "to have" inflected into the imperfect tense and a past participle which is invariable according to person and number. However, in the
Pantesco dialect of the language, an alternative structure using the verb "to be" is found. In this structure, the 3rd person singular imperfect of the verb to be (
era, "he/she/it was") is used to indicate the pluperferct, which is followed the preterite, conjugated for number and person. This structure has similarities to the pluperfect in Maltese, and therefore it appears likely that the Pantesco form was influenced by the Arabic dialect formerly spoken on
Pantelleria. :
Spanish In
Spanish, there are also two pluperfects, being the pluperfect proper (
pluscuamperfecto, or
antecopretérito) and the so called
pretérito anterior (or
antepretérito). While the former uses the
imperfect of the auxiliary verb
haber plus the past participle, the latter is formed with the
simple past of
haber plus the past participle. For example, in pluperfect
Había comido cuando mi madre vino 'I had eaten when my mother came', but in
pretérito anterior Hube comido cuando mi madre vino 'I had eaten when my mother would come'. This last form however is rarely used. Sometimes (specially in journalism) the imperfect subjunctive with '-ar' termination can be used with a pluperfect sense in subordinated phrases, but it is neither normative nor recommended.
Germanic languages Dutch In
Dutch, the pluperfect (
voltooid verleden tijd) is formed similarly as in German: the past participle (
voltooid deelwoord) is combined with the past-tense form of the auxiliary verb
hebben or
zijn, depending on the full lexical verb:
Voordat ik er erg in had, was het al twaalf uur geworden. –
Before I noticed, it had become noon already. In addition, pluperfect is sometimes used instead of present perfect:
Dat had ik al gezien (voordat jij het zag) – lit.:
I had seen that (before you did). The parenthesized part is implied and, therefore, can be omitted.
English In
English grammar, the pluperfect is formed by combining the
auxiliary verb had with the
past participle of the main verb, as in
had jumped or
had written, often used in its contracted form '
d, as in ''I'd jumped
. It is commonly called the past perfect, being a combination of perfect aspect (marked by the use of the have
auxiliary with the past participle) and past tense (marked by the use of the past tense of that auxiliary, had''). It is one of a number of analogously formed perfect constructions, such as the
present perfect ("have/has jumped"),
future perfect ("will have jumped") and
conditional perfect ("would have jumped"). Unlike the present perfect, the past perfect can readily be used with an adverb specifying a past time frame for the occurrence. For example, it is incorrect to say *
I have done it last Friday (the use of
last Friday, specifying the past time, would entail the use of the
simple past,
I did it, rather than the present perfect). However, there is no such objection to a sentence like
I had done it last Friday, where the past perfect is accompanied by a specification of the time of occurrence, especially in a context that clearly provides for a connection with another past event, either specified (as in ''I hadn't met him then.
) or implied (as in I hadn't expected that.''). English also has a
past perfect progressive (or
past perfect continuous) construction, such as
had been working. This is the past equivalent of the
present perfect progressive, and is used to refer to an ongoing action that continued up to the past time of reference. For example: "It
had been raining all night when he awoke." It is also commonly used to refer to actions that had led to consequences in the past (as in ''I was sleepy because I'd been working all night.''). The past perfect form also has some uses in which it does not directly refer to an actual past event. These are generally in condition clauses and some other
dependent clauses referring to hypothetical circumstances (as in "If I'd known about that, I wouldn't have asked."), as well as certain expressions of wish (as in "I wish I hadn't been so stupid back then.").
German In
German, the pluperfect (
Plusquamperfekt,
Präteritumperfekt, or
Vorvergangenheit, lit.
pre-past) 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. :
Nachdem ich aufgestanden war
, ging ich ins Badezimmer. : "After I had got up, I went into the bathroom." When using modal verbs, one can use either the modal verb in the preterite or the auxiliary (
haben for all modals): :
Es hatte regnen müssen. :"It had to have rained." :
Es musste geregnet haben. :"It
must have rained." There is a drastic shift of meaning between these variants: the first sentences denote that it "had been necessary" to rain in the past. The second sentence denotes that the speaker assumed that it had rained.
Swedish In
standard Swedish, the pluperfect (
pluskvamperfekt) is similar to the pluperfect in a number of other Germanic languages, but with a slightly different word order, and is formed with the
preterite form of
ha (
have in English), i.e.
hade (
had in English), plus the
supine form of the main verb:
När jag kom dit hade han gått hem –
When I arrived there he had gone home.
Slavic languages In some of the Slavic languages the pluperfect has fallen out of use or is rarely used; pluperfect meaning is often expressed using the ordinary past tense, with some
adverb (such as "earlier") or other
periphrastic construction to indicate prior occurrence.
Ukrainian and
Belarusian preserve a distinct pluperfect (
давньоминулий час or
запрошлы час –
davńomynulyj čas or
zaprošły čas) that is formed by preceding the verb with
buv /
bula in Ukrainian and
byŭ /
była in Belarusian (literally, 'was'). It was and still is used in daily speech, especially in rural areas. Being mostly unused in literature during
Soviet times, it is now regaining popularity. For example:
Ja vže buv pіšov, až raptom zhadav... (Ukrainian) and
Ja ŭžo byŭ pajšoŭ, kali raptam zhadaŭ (Belarusian)
I almost had gone already when I recalled... In
Slovenian, the pluperfect (
predpreteklik, 'before the past') is formed with the verb 'to be' (
biti) in past tense and the participle of the main verb. It is used to denote a completed action in the past before another action (
Pred nekaj leti so bile vode poplavile vsa nabrežja Savinje, 'A few years ago, all the banks of Savinja River had been flooded) or, with a
modal verb, a past event that should have happened (
Moral bi ti bil povedati, 'I should have told you'). Its use is considered archaic and is rarely used even in literary language. In
Polish pluperfect is only found in texts written in or imitating Old Polish, when it was formed with past (perfect) tense of
być "to be" and past participle of the main verb. The person marking is movable, e.g.
zrobił byłem ~ zrobiłem był "I had done". Past tense of the adjectival verbs (
powinienem był zrobić "I should have done") and conditional mood (
zrobiłbym był "I would have done") are often wrongly considered pluperfect forms – morphologically, the latter is actually past conditional, rarely used in modern Polish. In
Serbo-Croatian, the pluperfect ("pluskvamperfekt") is constructed with the past tense ("perfekt") of the verb to be ("biti") plus the adjective form of the main verb. Alternatively, it can be formed by using the imperfect ("imperfekt") of "biti" with the past participle of the main verb. For example: "Ja sam bio učio" (or: "Ja bijah učio"), which means, "I had been studying". In
Bulgarian, the pluperfect (
минало предварително време) is formed with the imperfect tense of the auxiliary verb
съм (to be) and the perfect active participle of the main verb.
Celtic languages In
Welsh, the pluperfect is formed without an auxiliary verb, usually by interpolating
-as- before the simple past ending:
parhasem, "we had remained". In
Irish, perfect forms are constructed using the idea of being (or having been)
after doing something. In the pluperfect,
bhíomar tar éis imeacht, "we had gone", literally, "we were after going".
In non-Indo-European languages In
Finnish, the pluperfect (
pluskvamperfekti) is constructed with an auxiliary verb
olla 'to be', which is in the past tense. The primary verbs get the past participle endings
-nyt/-nut in singular,
-neet in plural forms (the 'n' assimilates with certain consonants) and
-ttu/-tty/-tu/-ty in passive forms.\ In
Korean, the pluperfect is formed by adding an additional "었". "었" is a
morpheme that is analogous to the suffix "ed" in English, in that it is also used to form the simple past tense. Thus • 먹 = eat (variously conjugated 먹다, 먹어, 먹어요, 먹습니다,
etc.) • 먹었 = ate (variously conjugated 먹었다, 먹었어, 먹었어요, 먹었습니다,
etc.) • 먹었었 = had eaten (variously conjugated 먹었었다, 먹었었어, 먹었었어요, 먹었었습니다,
etc.) In
Classical Nahuatl, the pluperfect is formed by adding to the end of the verb; while close to the average meaning of past perfect, it more accurately reflects an action that has been undone by the time of speaking. For example, roughly translates to "I had slept." ==Table of forms==