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Past Perfect (過去完成式)

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1.   Used to indicate an event or action that happened or completed before another one or before a specific time in the past (specifying duration from the past until another action in the past).  

2.  Used to indicate an unreal situation in the past as in the case of 3rd conditional.  See http://elisaenglish.pixnet.net/blog/post/639518

For example:

1.   John had landed a job at Walmart not long before he graduated from college.

1.  I had never studied English before I moved to Johannesburg.

1.  I had dark circles under eyes the other day because I hadn’t had much sleep before then.

1.  I had lived in Johannesburg for over six years before I moved back to Taiwan.

1.  By the time Jimmy was eligible for naturalization as a US citizen, he had already lived in America for more than ten years.

1.  I had been to Paris twice before I got married.

1.  His car had been stolen several times before he moved to a safer neighborhood.

2.  Mary wishes that she had not gone to that poor movie with Smith last night. 

=> In reality, she went.

 瑪麗但願昨晚沒有跟史密斯去看那場爛電影。
=> 但瑪麗昨晚有去

In the case of “before” or “after”, which already indicates what happened first, the Past Perfect is optional, and you can use past tense.  (See http://elisaenglish.pixnet.net/blog/post/639613 for more detail analysis around past simple vs. Past Perfect)

For example:

Jimmy had written an article about global warming once (in 2008) before he was promoted to be the newspaper’s senior columnist for environmental issues this February.  (O)

Jimmy wrote an article about global warming once (in 2008) before he was promoted to be the newspaper’s senior columnist for environmental issues this February.   (O)

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