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Would you use past perfect in following sentence or would you rather go with other tense?

It had been here before we came.

ColleenV
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Alžbeta Čelesová
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  • You should add more context to what you want to say. It is possible to use either "It had been here ... " or "It was here ..." but there's a difference in nuance. – Andrew Sep 28 '16 at 18:16
  • I would just like to point out that some kind of product, had already been here before I actually got to that place where the product is. Is that right? – Alžbeta Čelesová Sep 28 '16 at 18:20
  • In that case "was" is simple and clear. "It was here before we came." – Andrew Sep 28 '16 at 18:22
  • and why not past perfect? – Alžbeta Čelesová Sep 28 '16 at 18:25
  • Let me move this to an answer and I'll provide more detail. – Andrew Sep 28 '16 at 19:05
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    No new answer is required, unless FumbleFingers' Perfect Truism can be improved upon: Don't use the perfect unless you have to. – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Sep 28 '16 at 19:10
  • @JavaLatte: I think you're being wrongly influenced by the fact that both questions include the word *before. In practice (for the most likely* contexts) I think Past Perfect is more idiomatic than Simple Past in that earlier question, but Simple Past is *far* more likely for OP's example here (in line with the basic KISS principle). Having said that, there probably is a better duplicate, given how often issues like this come up on ELL. But offhand I can't find it. – FumbleFingers Sep 28 '16 at 20:05
  • @FumbleFingers Your light belongs out from under the bushel. Isn't this is a veritable examplar of a needless use of the perfect? It was here before we came. I'd like to understand why so many questions plow this same ground. What is it about the perfect that so entices people—especially new learners, but others, too—to tinker with it? Is it something about the largely uninflected nature of English as opposed to a NNL's first language? (That's my theory, anyway.) – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Sep 28 '16 at 21:52
  • @FumbleFingers: yes, I did choose that one because it contains before, and also because the answer says that simple past is OK. I agree that there are probably better examples. but like you I couldn't find them. – JavaLatte Sep 29 '16 at 06:07
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    @P. E. Dant: I've voted to reopen. I don't endorse the earlier answer (or the one here, though I wasn't the one who downvoted it), and I'm not convinced they're duplicates because *I can't explain* why I think Past Perfect is effectively required in *It was 8:30. My brother had arrived 3 hours before,* whereas it's at best "credible" in *It had been here before we came*. But I seem to have a very strong preference for Simple Past in this later example, and nothing said so far sheds any light on why that might be so. – FumbleFingers Sep 29 '16 at 12:06
  • ...it might be worth pointing out that WW2 ended before I was born sounds reasonable to me (and there are 65 hits in Google Books for that construction). But WW2 had* ended before I was born* doesn't sound so good to me - nor apparently to most writers, since that version gets only 2 hits. There must be a simple explanation for why I/we consistently make that choice, but as yet it escapes me. – FumbleFingers Sep 29 '16 at 12:20
  • @FumbleFingers I wasn't very confident in my close vote, and I agree about the existing answers. +1 – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Sep 29 '16 at 13:43
  • @FumbleFingers I've scrutinized this question with a mighty scrute, and I keep coming back to your truism. I could form a question to which It had been here before we came would be a meaningful answer, and to which It was there before we came would not be a meaningful answer, but forming it requires a very complicated context. In almost every circumstance, It was there is shorter, more comprehensible, and sounds better. In other words, the best answer to this question is still "Don't use the perfect unless you have to." – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Sep 29 '16 at 17:08
  • @P. E. Dant: True, the general principle of It's not necessary, so don't use it seems to apply to this OP's example. But I still don't see why *It was 8:30. My brother had arrived 3 hours before* pretty much requires Past Perfect. Someone wiser than me (perhaps wiser than you!) needs to wade in (weigh in? - now I'm getting confused about that! :) – FumbleFingers Sep 29 '16 at 17:19
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    @FumbleFingers Oh no! Please don't wade in. Next we'll be honing in and getting untracked. – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Sep 29 '16 at 17:23
  • I wouldn't want to get sidetracked when I'm homing in, but there are currently more upvotes than downvotes for the answer in that link, which claims the majority of the public will likely think "home in" to be a mistake and that it should be "hone in." (I'd have liked to carp about the full stop being in the wrong place there too, but you can't win every argument against Americans! :) – FumbleFingers Sep 29 '16 at 17:56
  • Possible duplicate of When is the past perfect exactly needed? – Alan Carmack Sep 29 '16 at 19:12
  • @FumbleFingers Let's get back on track lest we begin striking the mule with the stick. This absurd eggcorn, which stems from the public's lost connection (or connexion!) to its agrarian roots, and is hilarious to anyone who has ever met a mule in real life and knows that once struck, a mule will never do the assailant's bidding, has now been granted the respectability (fsvo the term) of its own Wikipedia entry! – P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica Sep 29 '16 at 19:13

2 Answers2

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From the additional detail in the comments this is a question of when to use the simple past and when to use the past perfect:

"It had been here before we came."

"It was here before we came."

As with many languages, in English the "perfect" verb forms imply a temporal relationship, for example something that was true then, but may not be true now, or that it occurred before some other significant and related event. In this case, if you say, "It had been here ..." you imply that something happened to it when or after "we came".

"It had been here for many years before we came and took it away."

"It had been here for many years before we came, but when we touched it, it unexpectedly came alive!"

As P.E. Dant suggests in his comment, a good rule is not to use the perfect unless there's a specific need for it. In this case, since you just want to say "some kind of product had already been here before I actually got to that place where the product is" the simple past should be sufficient.

Andrew
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0

In commentary, this question was expanded to:

and why not past perfect?

One might similarly ask "and why not past perfect continuous?"

"It had been being here before we came."

This expresses a state of existence identical to that expressed in It was here before we came and in It had been here before we came, and just as there is no rule of grammar which prohibits its use, there is none which requires it. There can be context in conversation or literature which requires its use (or the use of the past perfect) to make meaning clear, but we have nothing here upon which to rely. Without context, this is an instance in which the perfect is just unnecessary.

My theory (and I don't claim that I originated it, or that it is supportable, only that I subscribe to it) is that in English, as in most languages, popular usage tends to simplify rather than to complicate: that given a choice between a complex and a simple verb form, our ear prefers the simple. I have nothing to support this theory, and it may be in any case only an exemplar of Argumentum Ad Ignorantium.

As opposed to this intuitive reading, a more scholarly and well-formed discursion which may have some bearing on this phenomenon can be found in FumbleFingers' Perfect Truism.

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P. E. Dant Reinstate Monica
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