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Bernard Comrie classifies the pluperfect as an absolute-relative tense, because it absolutely (not by context) establishes a deixis (the past event) and places the action relative to the deixis (before it). [1] Examples of the English pluperfect (past perfect) are found in the following sentence (from Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning):
An English pluperfect tense is sometimes appropriate for translating this Latin tense: Atreī fīliī, quī Pelope nātus fuit (Cicero) [217] 'sons of Atreus, who (himself) was born (had been born) from Pelops' In the following examples, the double perfect refers to a situation which existed a long time earlier, before Ovid was exiled:
The pluperfect and future perfect forms combine perfect aspect with past and future tense respectively. This analysis is reflected more explicitly in the terminology commonly used in modern English grammars, which refer to present perfect, past perfect and future perfect (as well as some other constructions such as conditional perfect).
Some languages lack absolute-relative tenses. In Russian, for example, there is no pluperfect or future perfect; these meanings are expressed by absolute past or future tense respectively, with adverbs or other lexical means being used, if required, to express temporal relations with specified reference points.
The three past tenses (imperfect, aorist, and pluperfect), in the classical period, are made by adding a prefix ἐ-(e-), called an "augment", on the beginning of the verb. [36] Thus from γράφω (gráphō) "I write" are made: ἔγραφον (égraphon) "I was writing" ἔγραψα (égrapsa) "I wrote" ἐγεγράφη (egegráphē) "I ...
If the secondary past applies to an event that had happened prior to a past point in time, the tertiary past applies to a third event that had happened earlier than that. The tertiary past is realised by a 'pluperfect indicative' auxiliary in either the "sum" perfect periphrasis or the "habeō" perfect periphrasis.
Virgil has a short i for both tenses; Horace uses both forms for both tenses; Ovid uses both forms for the future perfect, but a long i in the perfect subjunctive. [10] The -v-of the perfect active tenses sometimes drops out, especially in the pluperfect subjunctive: amāssem for amāvissem. Forms such as amārat and amāstī are also found.
In the following example, which describes the character of Alcibiades, the pluperfect and imperfect tenses are used in the temporal clause in an iterative sentence in past time: cum tempus pōsceret, labōriōsus, patiēns...; īdem, simulac sē remīserat neque causa suberat quārē animī labōrem perferret, luxuriōsus, dissolūtus ...