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tenses... why perfect?

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tenses... why perfect?

by isvas » Wed Mar 10, 2010 11:46 pm
Some historians estimate that in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, twice as much acreage was destroyed than had earlier been ravaged in Napoleon ' s Moscow burnings of 1812 and the Great Fire of London of 1666 combined.

than had earlier been
than the amount that was earlier
over the amount that was previously
as had earlier been
as was

OA D

My question:
[spoiler]Why use PAST PERFECT when the difference in times is straigt fwd
I mean the years are mentioned, so obviously one happened before the other[/spoiler]
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by girish3131 » Thu Mar 11, 2010 12:31 am
r u sure abt OA...?

acc to me ans is E


ta
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by isvas » Thu Mar 11, 2010 1:02 am
Yes, this is from Kaplan CAT
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by KapTeacherEli » Thu Mar 11, 2010 12:24 pm
isvas, I'm not quite sure I understand your question--yes, the time difference is obvious, but we still need the past perfect tense here to be grammatically consistent. Can you explain why exactly you think you don't need it, so I can better address your question?
Eli Meyer
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www.kaptest.com/gmat

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by bigmonkey31 » Thu Mar 11, 2010 1:40 pm
I too am curious. To my understanding, if the time sequence is obvious (i.e. the date is included in the above example), do we need to use the past perfect?

How about this simple example:

'After school ended, I played soccer.'
Is this correct? Sounds good too me because of the "after" suggesting the sequence.
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by isvas » Thu Mar 11, 2010 3:26 pm
'bigmonkey31' got it right

I played soccer after school ended (or)
I played soccer after school had ended
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by thephoenix » Thu Mar 11, 2010 7:17 pm
KapTeacherEli wrote:isvas, I'm not quite sure I understand your question--yes, the time difference is obvious, but we still need the past perfect tense here to be grammatically consistent. Can you explain why exactly you think you don't need it, so I can better address your question?
isvas is asking that we have two time frames
something which happened in 1812
and something happened in 1871

now rule for past perfect is that we need to use had for the earlier in order to do sequencing of events.....
so that there should not be any ambiguity..

but since 1812 comes before 1871 ; why the correct ans is using had ( a perfect tense)
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by kstv » Thu Mar 11, 2010 11:36 pm
Some historians estimate that in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, twice as much acreage was destroyed than had earlier been ravaged in Napoleon ' s Moscow burnings of 1812 and the Great Fire of London of 1666 combined.
than had earlier been
than the amount that was earlier
over the amount that was previously
as had earlier been
as was
The correct idiom is 'as much as'. So D and E qualifies.
Also the use of 'amount' in B and C seems incorrect .
Regarding the use of Past Perfect it is still being used for the earlier events as per rule. Rephase the sentence.
Some historians estimate that twice as much acreage was destroyed , ( than had earlier been ravaged in Napoleon ' s Moscow burnings of 1812 and the Great Fire of London of 1666 combined ) , in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Not the correct construction but the had is being used for the earlier event.
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by mj41 » Fri Mar 12, 2010 11:10 pm
Good one ......is A wrong because teh correct idiom is "as much as"???
just shows dont play it by the ear
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by sohrabkalra » Fri Dec 09, 2011 3:03 am
had a doubt regarding the same question so posting it here rather than starting a new thread !

Eli,

My question is that we normally use the past perfect form to make the sequence of events clear when two or more events occurred in the past. BUT if they occur at the same time( i:e there is no sequence to be ambiguous) or the sequence is irrelevant ( that is they are two independent events in the past which have no correlation in terms of one affecting the other) then we use prefer the simple form rather than the perfect one ( correct me if i am wrong here) !

So in this question the two events have no bearing on each other , so isnt the usage of perfect tense is unnecessary ? we are just comparing the money spent and not emphasizing which came first

For example : if we take out the mentioned years in the sentence

1)in the great chicago fire, twice as much acreage was destroyed than (had been/was) destroyed in napolean's moscow burnings and the great fire of london combined ! Does removing the time alter the meaning of sentence ? NO, so it is not necessary to highlight which came first and hence we can use Was in preference to had been?
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