Hi everybody.
Here is a quotation:
"There are a few allusions to China in this book, all of which were written before I had been to China, and are not intended to be taken by the reader as geographically accurate".
The author wrote the book first. Then he visited China. I do not understand why the visit to China is written in the Past Perfect Tense. I'd write this in the Past Simple Tense, and The Past Perfect is, IMHO, appropriate for the othert part:
"... all of which had been written before I visited China..."
Help, please.
This is related to another thread entitled
'Simple Past vs. Present Perfect [in AE]'
The issue is this: some people prefer to say
"I have been to China" instead of "I went to China"
in the present tense. These people in general prefer
the present perfect for that sort of sentence.
The would say:
I have been married, but now I am divorced.
I have not seen him yet today.
I haven't eaten lunch yet.
If you put a sentence of this form into the past,
the present perfect becomes past perfect, and
you get phrases like 'I had been to China'.
I agree with D.
for your information, I'm not native. however, I think we are going through similar steps as non-natives. So, I can give my opinion. right?
grammartically speaking, I also think that sentence is a bit nonsense. past perfect is supposed to refer to sometime before the past tense of the same sentence. I guess people tend to use perfect tense to say experiences. That's why 'I had been to China' is there. It does not always have to indicate earlier past. Natives are not analytic with their own language. The sentence was wrote that way and It didn't sounded awkward to the author. He kept on writing. That's it.
that's how I see..
Still, I think it should have been at least present tense to strictly make sense.
I agree with lucky that the sentence doesn't make sense
if you analyze the 'had been' as indicating an earlier past time.
I had to read it quickly for it to make sense.
Take the present-tense sentence:
I am writing a book, but I have never gone to China.
and put it into the past tense (just change all the verbs to past tense).
You get:
I wrote a book, but I had never been to China.
Native speakers hear the 'had been' in that sentence as a past tense of
'have been'.
Oxford dictionary, under the entry 'before':
Note: The past perfect tense (had + past participle) has a special use with 'before' to refer to an action not completed or done at the time, as in She walked away before I'd finished explaining.
Ori, great information.
At the same time, I got reassured that half of grammar is only sum of excuses for nonsenses.
I guess someone in the far past raised the same question as Ant_222 and a grammarian created an excuse for that, which has been passing on until now.
anyway, it's good thing we already have the explaination to the question.
Nice definition...
Rule #1 one has got to know when studying a language is: never ask why! Just take it as it is.
>I am writing a book, but I have never gone to China.
>I wrote a book, but I had never been to China.
This is ok even from the viewpoint of a precceding action. That time [in the past] I'd say: I've never been to China. This 'being in China' is here considered as preceeding to the moment he was writing the book, to a moment in the past, so The Past Perfect is good.
>Note: The past perfect tense (had + past participle) has a special use
>with 'before' to refer to an action not completed or done at the time, as
>in She walked away before I'd finished explaining.
And this, I think, is good.
'Can you [do something] before I have finished [somthing]?'
Shifting the tenses gives us a sentence of the desired kind. So, I agree with D's explanation, but not with his example.
And what about my variant? Do you think it is correct?
>Rule #1 one has got to know when studying a language is: never ask
>why! Just take it as it is.
During learning a language you begin to 'feel' it. That is a kind of the true understanding. An Understanding of a language via grammar rules is not the true understanding. Grammar rules just should be thought of as of mnemonic rules, so that you need to remember less. As a consequence of practice, grammar rules will be gradually replaced by the 'feeling' of the language.