A case of a past perfect sentence that evokes lost opportunity

[Joe Carillo]

A question from Roman Kuchukbaev, a Russia-based English learner, about the past perfect sentence (June 26, 2018):

Dear Mr. Joe,

My name is Roman. I’m living in Russia and learning English.

I came across your blog and found it very interesting and helpful for expanding my horizons in English.

I am just in the beginning of my way in learning and I have some difficulties, especially in English tenses. I’ve read in your blog an article called “The specific timelines for the perfect tenses - 2” and an explanation of the past perfect tense. You wrote: “This tense, which uses ‘had’ with the past participle, is used to describe (1) an action completed before another past event, and (2) an action that began and ended at some unspecified time in the past.

In Case 1, the past perfect component is paired off with at least one other past action in the simple past tense: “Rowena had left to work in Dubai when her scholarship was approved.” Note that this past perfect sentence consists of two separate actions, one in the past perfect and the other in the simple past.

Could you be so kind please to make the next sentence clear to me: “Rowena had left work in Dubai when her scholarship was approved.”

As I understand, at first Rowena's scholarship was approved and after that she left the work in Dubai. Therefore, if the past perfect expresses an action completed before another one, it has to sound like: “Rowena left to work in Dubai when her scholarship had been approved.” Or am I wrong?

I’m looking forward for your reply and thank you!

Best regards,
 
Roman

My reply to Roman:

As discussed in my Forum posting of “The specific timelines for the perfect tenses – 2,” the first case usage (Case 1) of the past perfect is to describe (1) an action completed before another past event. In such cases, the past perfect component is paired off with at least one other past action in the simple past tense, as in this example that I provided: “Rowena had left to work in Dubai when her scholarship was approved.”

That past perfect sentence consists of two separate actions—one in the past perfect, “Rowena had left to work in Dubai,” and the other action in the simple past, “when her scholarship was approved.” What this sentence means to say is that the approval of Rowena’s scholarship application (the simple past tense action) came after she had already left to work in Dubai (the past perfect action). In short, the scholarship approval came too late for her to accept it because she had already decided and had, in fact, already left for Dubai to work there.

This situation is entirely different from the situation described by this sentence of yours: “Rowena left to work in Dubai when her scholarship had been approved.” To begin with, it is grammatically faulty for the sense you have in mind, which is that even if Rowena got approval for her scholarship application beforehand, she decided to go to Dubai and work there nevertheless. The grammatically correct and logical form for that sentence of yours is this: “Rowena left to work in Dubai when her scholarship was approved.” Here, we have two coordinate simple past tense clauses—“Rowena left to work in Dubai” and “her scholarship was approved”—linked by the coordinating conjunction “when.” But then this sentence doesn’t accurately describe the situation as it actually happened in Rowena’s case.

What actually happened was a case of something Rowena had hoped for and was waiting for coming too late—“Rowena had left to work in Dubai when her scholarship was approved”—for her to make good of it; it is the lost opportunity of accepting that scholarship and not working in Dubai instead. This is the sense and essence of Case 1 of the past perfect: an action completed before another past event with all its attendant consequences.

I trust that you’ll find this explanation will clarify your understanding of the English past perfect tense.

Have a nice week in Russia!

IMPORTANT RELATED READINGS:
The perfect tenses as a major grammar challenge
The specific timelines for the perfect tenses - 2

[Roman Kuchukbaev]

Joe, thank you again for your quick and exhaustive reply.
I have one more question about sequence of tenses: what tense would be more appropriate in such a compound sentence: “When I was a kid my parents had been raising the sheep”
The past perfect continuous seems to be suitable in this case, but I doubt it because some sources claim that the past perfect continuous means a continuing action or process in the past finished just before an other one. Whereas in my case the action (raising the sheep) started in the past (probably even before my birth) and was still happening at the moment of my being a kid. So that perhaps it is better to use the past continuous ‘my parents were raising the sheep’ or even the past simple is enough ‘my parents raised the sheep’?

[Joe Carillo]

As explained in my posting of "The specific timelines for the perfect tenses - 2," the past perfect progressive or continuous tense is used to emphasize the duration of an action that was completed before another action or event in the past, as in "She had been driving around the city for three hours before she finally found the right office."

The sentence you presented, “When I was a kid my parents had been raising sheep” (I knocked off the article "the" because it gives the wrong impression that your parents raised a particular and specific batch of sheep rather than engaged in sheep-raising in general), does not indicate the duration of an action that was completed before another action or event in the past, which would require the past perfect progressive or continuous tense. Instead, it involves an action that began and ended at some unspecified time in the past, so as you supposed, the past progressive or past continuous is the proper tense to use, “When I was a kid my parents were raising sheep.” It is also OK to use the past simple tense, “When I was a kid my parents raised sheep.” In both cases, no idea is given as to when the sheep-raising activity began or ended. All that's known is that the activity happened in the past.

The past progressive or past continuous will be called for though if the raising of the ship was stopped or discontinued for some reason, as in “When I was a kid my parents were raising sheep but stopped doing so when World War II broke out.”

The past tense form will be OK, too, as in the case of the sentence “When I was a kid my parents raised sheep to feed the family as World War II raged in Europe.” The sense is, of course, entirely different, with two coordinate simple past actions happening simultaneously.