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D360 - Lingua Inglesa (M. Atena) - Material de Aula - 02 (Rodrigo A.) PDF
D360 - Lingua Inglesa (M. Atena) - Material de Aula - 02 (Rodrigo A.) PDF
Past Perfect
Just as the present perfect refers to a time-frame in the past that has
relevance to the present, the past perfect refers to a time-frame leading
up to a point in the past.
In other words, the present perfect refers to ‘time up to now’, while the
past perfect refers to a ‘time up to then’.
Example:
That was in 1938. I left in June with the children for a new home in Oxford,
where my mother had bought a house. My father had died in 1936.
↓
This can be illustrated as:
‘then’ (= 1938):
I left in June
Other examples:
There were many car accidents that morning. It had rained all night. (then
= “that morning”)
The past perfect is very frequent in reported clauses where the reporting
verb is in the past:
Linda kept me informed and she said that her husband had moved back
in.
The policed informed me that criminals had robbed stores in the area
before.
The past perfect is also often used to refer to situations which were true
but which have been or are to be changed. In such cases, had is often
stressed:
I had planned to stay in the library and study until 9:30, but I was too
tired.
We had hoped to see them at the party, but they didn’t come.
She was so old she would have died if she had caught swine flu.
Well, even if you had come home tonight, you would have been upset
anyway.
Obs. The past perfect is not used in the main clause in hypothetical
conditional sentence:
They all left the room when she recited her poem. → Suggests they all left
at the moment she started reciting.
They all left the room when she had recited her poem. → Suggests they
left after she had finished reciting.
The past simple also suggests a more immediate causal link between two
events, compared to the past perfect:
When he opened his third present, he looked at the roller skates and
smiled. → Stresses the immediate result, suggesting that the rollers skates
were his third present.
When he had opened his third present, he looked at the roller skates and
smiled. → Not such an immediate relationship; the roller skates may not
have been the third present.
He had written many essays that month. He was tired. → He wrote many
essays (he’s done), and because of it, he was tired. (“then relevance”)
He had been writing many essays that month. He was tired. → He wrote
and he was still writing many essays that month, and because of it, he was
tired.
Past Perfect Progressive
The principles for choosing between the past perfect and the past perfect
progressive are the same as those operating between the present perfect
and the present perfect continuous.
The past perfect progressive is used for events which had started in the
past and were still continuing at the moment “then”.
Again, context and/or adjuncts are going to be used to indicate the “event
in the past still continuing then” aspect!
We had been playing football for five minutes when you showed up. →
Ongoing event continuing up to that point in the past “when you showed
up”.
I had been working so intensely I could not believe when everything was
finished. → Ongoing event continuing up to that point in the past “when
everything was finished”.
I felt so sick that morning. I had been sneezing and blowing my nose all
night. → Ongoing event continuing up to “that morning”.
Often, the difference between the past perfect and the past perfect
progressive is the emphasis on the extended aspect of the event in the
past (past perfect progressive) or the emphasis on that event being
completed on a ‘time up to then’ time-frame (past perfect):
After their departure Edith noticed the small white card lying on the table.
She had been meaning to tell her brother about it, he had the right to
know, but their behavior had put everything else out of her mind.
↓
“had been meaning…” refers to an extended event going on around that
time-frame; “had put” refers to a single, completed event that occurred
during that time.
The past tense forms refer to a time-frame that is in some way separated
from the present; there is a clear break between the completion of the
event and the present moment. This break may be explicitly stated by an
expression of definite past time (ex: yesterday, last week, in 1975) or may
be implicit through context.
The past tense forms may be contrasted with the present perfect forms,
which are used to refer to events in a time-frame that is still connected to
the present moment (“now relevance”).
The basic difference between the speaker’s perception of the time as past
or as extending until now, and the choice of the past tense or the present
perfect forms can be expressed as:
----Time---→ Now
Event
----Time---→ Now
Event --→ Now
A speaker may also refer to a time-frame in the past and to events from
an earlier past that are linked in some way to that time-frame. In these
cases, the past perfect forms may be used. This relationship may be
represented as:
----Time---→ Then
Event --→ Then
He had been dating her for a while, but he still had not met her parents.
TPS
Read the text and answer the following questions.
(TPS 2015)
He — for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did
something to disguise it — was in the act of slicing at the head of an enemy
which swung from the rafters. It was the colour of an old football, and more or
less the shape of one, save for the sunken cheeks and a strand or two of coarse,
dry hair, like the hair on a coconut. Orlando’s father, or perhaps his grandfather,
had struck it from the shoulders of a vast Pagan who had started up under the
moon in the barbarian fields of Africa; and now it swung, gently, perpetually, in
the breeze which never ceased blowing through the attic rooms of the gigantic
house of the lord who had slain him.
Orlando’s fathers had ridden in fields of asphodel, and stony fields, and fields
watered by strange rivers, and they had struck many heads of many colours off
many shoulders, and brought them back to hang from the rafters. So too would
Orlando, he vowed. But since he was sixteen only, and too young to ride with
them in Africa or France, he would steal away from his mother and the peacocks
in the garden and go to his attic room and there lunge and plunge and slice the
air with his blade. (…) His fathers had been noble since they had been at all.
They came out of the northern mists wearing coronets on their heads. Were not
the bars of darkness in the room, and the yellow pools which chequered the
floor, made by the sun falling through the stained glass of a vast coat of arms in
the window? Orlando stood now in the midst of the yellow body of a heraldic
leopard. When he put his hand on the window-sill to push the window open, it
was instantly coloured red, blue, and yellow like a butterfly’s wing. Thus, those
who like symbols, and have a turn for the deciphering of them, might observe
that though the shapely legs, the handsome body, and the well-set shoulders
were all of them decorated with various tints of heraldic light, Orlando’s face, as
he threw the window open, was lit solely by the sun itself. A more candid, sullen
face would be impossible to find. Happy the mother who bears, happier still the
biographer who records the life of such a one! Never need she vex herself, nor
he invokes the help of novelist or poet. From deed to deed, from glory to glory,
from office to office he must go, his scribe following after, till they reach
whatever seat it may be that is the height of their desire. Orlando, to look at,
was cut out precisely for some such career. The red of the cheeks was covered
with peach down; the down on the lips was only a little thicker than the down
on the cheeks. The lips themselves were short and slightly drawn back over
teeth of an exquisite and almond whiteness. Nothing disturbed the arrowy nose
in its short, tense flight; the hair was dark, the ears small, and fitted closely to
the head. But, alas, that these catalogues of youthful beauty cannot end
without mentioning forehead and eyes. Alas, that people are seldom born
devoid of all three; for directly we glance at Orlando standing by the window,
we must admit that he had eyes like drenched violets, so large that the water
seemed to have brimmed in them and widened them; and a brow like the
swelling of a marble dome pressed between the two blank medallions which
were his temples. Directly we glance at eyes and forehead, thus do we
rhapsodize. Directly we glance at eyes and forehead, we have to admit a
thousand disagreeables which it is the aim of every good biographer to ignore.
Mock exam
Read the text and answer the following questions
Henry Ford, the founder of the carmaker that still bears his name,
declared in 1916 that “History is more or less bunk.” When asked to open
a museum more than a decade later, he sought to clarify his comments. It
is not politicians and generals who change the future, he said, but the lives
of ordinary people such as farmers or engineers. Two new papers,
presented at Britain’s Economic History Society's annual conference last
month, suggest that the legacy of individuals’ personal struggles in
America is more enduring than even Ford could have imagined.
2 – The social context into which individuals are born matters less than
their own actions throughout their lives.
2 – Even though the topics of the studies all involved the United States,
American academics are not studying their own country’s economic
history.