By 1945,the US HAD BEEN

[dddanny2006]

The books says that the later past event does not need to be expressed with a Simple past tense verb.You could just use a date or another time reference.

Right:By 1945,the United States HAD BEEN at war for several years.---Please clarify this sentence

According to the book,you can make a very tricky sentence in which the first clause expresses an early action in Simple Past.Then,a second clause expresses a later action in Past perfect to indicate continued action

What I had earlier understood was that the earlier event had to be in Past Perfect and the later past event had to be in Simple past formats,but in the above sentence they say that the later past event can be replaced by a date or another time reference---Could anybody clear this doubt as to how it happens?

Lets look at another sentence below:

The band U2 WAS just one of many new groups on the rock music scene in the early 1980's,but less than ten years later ,U2 HAD fully eclipsed its early rivals in the pantheon of popular music.

The earlier action 'WAS' is in simple past despite being a earlier past event,in comparison to 'HAD FULLY ECLIPSED' which despite being a later past event holds a Past Perfect verb tense.
This is exactly the opposite of the theory that deals with Past Perfect tenses.I know that I'm missing something.Please help me out here.


Thanks,

Dan

[ceilidh.erickson]

Hi Dan,

The Past Perfect tense must always be relative to another past tense event - it indicates something that happened before something else in the past. There are two ways we can use it:

1) With another verb in the simple past tense:
By the time I arrived, they had already left.

2) Relative to a time marker in the past:
By 9:00, they had already left.

Your first example fits this second condition:
By 1945,the United States HAD BEEN at war for several years.

Your second example is actually a bit more complicated. Let's break it into two pieces:
The band U2 WAS just one of many new groups on the rock music scene in the early 1980's, <- simple past tense indicating what happened in the early 1980s

but less than ten years later ,U2 HAD fully eclipsed its early rivals in the pantheon of popular music.
Here, "had eclipsed" is not actually relative to the simple past tense "was." It's relative to the time marker "ten years later." Effectively, we can think of this as "by the 1990s, they had eclipsed..."

Does that help to clarify?

[Brent@GMATPrepNow]

Hi Dan,

If you're interested in learning more about Past Perfect tense, we have a free video that covers everything you need to know: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gmat- ... on?id=1178

Cheers,
Brent