blacknomi said:
Sam-F said:
You would use the second case normally if she HAD BEEN in the classroom, but was no longer there. This is because "had been" refers to something that used to be true, but no longer is.
1.Josh had already gone home before I got to the pary.
[Josh had already gone home]:Josh went home.
2.Someone had broken into our apartment when we got home last night.
[Someone had broken into our apartment]:Someone broken into our home.
Therefore, the logic inferred from the examples listed above leads me to think about the possibility of Wai's example, the presence of the teacher.
3. The teacher had been already in the classroom before students came in.
[The teacher had been already in the classroom]: The teacher was there.
Do you understand my logic here? :lol:
Hi Blacknomi,
I made a mistake when I said "something that used to be true, but no longer is." What I mean was rather that the action was completed.
I'd disagree that your examples are equivalent to the teacher example, because your examples are of things that occured at one point in time: Josh went home, someone broke into our apartment. But compare these two examples, the second using the past perfect
-When we got home, someone was in our appartment,
-When we got home, someone had been in our appartment.
It is clear in the first example that the person was still in the apartment, and that, in the second, the intruder had been there but was no longer. I'd say that this example is exactly equivalent with Wai Wai's.
englishpage.com defines the past perfect as "the idea that something occurred before another action in the past. It can also show that something happened before a specific time in the past."
The key point here is that Wai Wai's sentence was "the teacher had already BEEN in the classroom before we arrived." If this event (her BEING there) happened before they arrived, it couldn't also be happening at the same time.
Contrast with a sentence that is closer to the examples that you were using: "The teacher had already ARRIVED before we did." This makes no assumptions as to whether or not she was still there: the only action it is describing is her arrival, not her being there. Therefore, she could perfectly well still be there.
Thus, if you use the past perfect with a verb that is continuous, such as a teacher being somewhere, or, say, someone telling a story, then you are implying that the action has finished:
-When we got home, someone had been in our appartment.
-When I arrived in the classoom, he had already told the story.