3

Here the chronology seems inverted as regards to the proper use of the past perfect and the preterite to order two different events that both occurred in the past:

  • He had not been[past perfect] happy with Sally
    since she mentioned[preterite] the lost purse.

Chronologically, the mention of the lost purse comes first. Do you agree that the preterite since she mentioned is correct, though? I do not need to write since she had mentioned the lost purse, do I?

How can the past perfect ever come after the preterite? Isn’t the entire reason for using these two contrasting constructions together so that the past perfect places one event further in the past than the preterite places other event?

How come you can invert the required sequence of tenses like this without breaking the time-ordering and confusing people?

Improve this question
5
  • What's the full context?
    – alphabet
    Commented Nov 23, 2023 at 22:32
  • 2
    Because English is perverse? More specifically, my intuition as a native speaker says that you don't need to use the past perfect in clauses with time prepositions like "since" and "when", even if the action occurs before the action in the main sentence; I don't have any idea why this is true; I don't think you could get away with it in French.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Nov 23, 2023 at 23:17
  • @PeterShor It's because it's a present perfect in the past. In other words it is a state that started before the time in the past that we're thinking about and it's still ongoing then. If the person had been speaking then he would have said "I haven't been happy with Sally since she lost the purse".
    – Araucaria - Him
    Commented Nov 24, 2023 at 0:49
  • She having mentioned the lost purse, thereafter he had not been happy with Sally. Up-voted +1.
    – Nigel J
    Commented Nov 24, 2023 at 16:12
  • He has not been happy since 2:00 pm.
    – Tinfoil Hat
    Commented Nov 25, 2023 at 2:16

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

His not being happy continued from a point in the past (T1), specified by her mentioning the lost purse, up until another time in the past, which we assume is the time the narration is referring to in the main clause (T2), a situation which calls for the preterite perfect. Her mentioning the lost purse is simply used to denote a point in time, and hence does not call for the preterite perfect as: (a) there is no current relevance to T2 and (b) it was a punctive event that did not continue in between T1 and T2. There is no relevance as the relation between her mentioning the lost purse and him not being happy with her is purely circumstantial - there is no direct causal link between the two, only temporal.

Compare with:

Since she had only completed two of the projects, we were forced to fire her.

where the situation introduced by since clearly has relevance to a punctive situation expressed in the main clause, or

He had been unhappy with her since she had been in his employ.

where the preterite perfect makes sense as the situation expressed by the clause introduced by since lasted for a period time up to the point of past narration.

Improve this answer
0

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .