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The past perfect progressive or past perfect continuous (also known as the pluperfect progressive or pluperfect continuous) combines perfect progressive aspect with past tense. It is formed by combining had (the past tense of auxiliary have), been (the past participle of be), and the present participle of the main verb.
Perfect: ductus sum (ductus fuī) 'I was led, I have been led' Future Perfect: ductus erō (ductus fuerō) 'I will have been led' Pluperfect: ductus eram (ductus fueram) 'I had been led' The perfectum system has simple tenses in the active (dūxī, dūxerō, dūxeram) and compound tenses in the passive (ductus sum, ductus erō, ductus eram).
The past perfect progressive (sometimes referred to as the past perfect continuous) combines had (the simple past of have) with been (the past participle of be) and the present participle of the main verb: You had been waiting. It is used to refer to an ongoing action that continued up to the past time of reference.
In English grammar, the pluperfect (e.g. "had written") is now usually called the past perfect, since it combines past tense with perfect aspect. (The same term is sometimes used in relation to the grammar of other languages.) English also has a past perfect progressive (or past perfect continuous) form: "had been writing".
In perfect progressive (or perfect continuous) constructions, the perfect auxiliary (a form of have) is followed by the past participle been (from be, the auxiliary of the progressive aspect), which in turn is followed by the present participle of the main verb. As before, the perfect auxiliary can appear in various tenses, moods and non-finite ...
Past perfect progressive (progressive, perfect): "I had been eating" Aspects can also be marked on non-finite forms of the verb: "(to) be eating" ( infinitive with progressive aspect), "(to) have eaten" (infinitive with perfect aspect), "having eaten" ( present participle or gerund with perfect aspect), etc.
Thus present progressive (present continuous) constructions take forms like am writing, is writing, are writing, while the past progressive (past continuous, also called imperfect) forms are was writing, were writing. There is a progressive infinitive (to) be writing and a progressive subjunctive be writing.
The non-past perfect form is a true perfect aspect as in English. In addition, all the basic forms (past and non-past, imperfective and perfective) can be combined with a particle indicating future tense/conditional mood. Combined with the non-past forms, this expresses an imperfective future and a perfective future.