The Pluperfect Principle

The Past Perfect Indicative is always an involute topic of conversation because many native speakers do not use it all that often (even when they are supposed to) and other times they invert the usage. Below is a conjugated form of the verb to speak using Past Perfect Indicative:

MODERN ENGLISH SYNTAX
Past Perfect Indicative (Pluperfect): to speak

1. I had spoken
2. You had spoken
3. He/She/It had spoken
4. We had spoken
5. You had spoken
6. They had spoken

The Past Perfect Indicative, also known as the pluperfect, is used when one wants the reader or listener to know which event had come prior to another past event. Here are some exemplars below to illustrate this concept:

Examples:

1. I had spoken to the boy before he went to school. (The speaker first spoke to boy then later in the past the boy went to school.)

2. I ran to my friend's house after I had finished playing baseball. (The speaker first played baseball then he ran to his friends house.

3. I had eaten dinner prior to taking a shower. (Eating dinner came first then the shower.)

In English, the Past Perfect Subjunctive is exactly the same as the Past Perfect Indicative. The only difference is how a person uses it, but if anyone were to look at it, at first glance, he would probably assume it was a simple Past Perfect Indicative case.

Furthermore, many native speakers have confused the Past Perfect Subjunctive clause with a conditional clause; therefore many now drop the word "had" and replace it with "would have," although this is grammatically incorrect. A version of this is also being done now in the protasis of other subjunctive clauses to replace the present or past subjunctive with a form that should only appear in the apodasis of these statements. In this instance the modal, "would" is inserted between the opening subject and present subjunctive verb to form two clauses (the protasis and the apodasis) that begin with the modal "would." Such a construction can be seen in some languages such as Spanish, but in English, this is a syntactic error. As for when it's a past subjunctive, the verb is then removed from past tense and placed into a present subjunctive tense to allow this error to fester.

Past Perfect Subjunctive (Pluperfect): to speak

1. I had spoken
2. You had spoken
3. He/She/It had spoken
4. We had spoken
5. You had spoken
6. They had spoken

Once again, you may notice that the construction is equivalent to its counterpart. The examples below will show you how you can decipher which one is in the indicative and which is in the subjunctive:

Examples:

1. If I had spoken to your girlfriend yesterday, she would have told you. (But I did speak to her yesterday.)

2. If I had had more time, I would have finished my test. (But I did not have more time.)

3. I would have done it for free provided I had had the resources. (But I did not do it for free and I had no resources.)

4. Had they seen you, they would have called the police. (But they did not see you so the police were not called.)

There is the pluperfect in so many words. I hope that this might have helped those of you who are learning another language by seeing it in your own native tongue. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.