Timeline for does the past perfect tense sound natural in this example?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 15, 2019 at 22:12 | vote | accept | anouk | ||
| Dec 8, 2018 at 6:32 | comment | added | Ross Murray | We agree that 'had played' sounds awkward. I would agree if you said 'had been playing' followed by 'before' does not spell out the complete sequence of events, but I would say that writers are entitled to omit facts when it suits their purposes. I see no NEED to add anything more. | |
| Dec 8, 2018 at 5:03 | comment | added | Andrew | @RossMurray "The boys had been playing football when Susan arrived" sounds fine, as long as you add some relevant event after to justify the perfect tense, e.g. "but they broke off and excitedly ran to her car". In any case if I wanted to say something is complete before something else happened, I would either explicitly say "complete", or just use the past tense. In this context the past perfect "had played" is semantically awkward. | |
| Dec 8, 2018 at 3:12 | comment | added | Ross Murray | @ Andrew I think why Susan arrived is irrelevant to the tense choice for 'play'. The past perf. cont, 'had been playing', suggests the boys are still playing when she arrived. The past perf. 'had played', explicitly says that the football had ended. The past simple, 'played', sounds most natural. The verb tense does not explicitly say the playing had ended but the use of 'before' does make that clear. | |
| Dec 7, 2018 at 23:05 | history | answered | Andrew | CC BY-SA 4.0 |