Past_Perfect_Continuous

Past Perfect Continuous Tense Form: Past form of auxiliary HAVE + Past Participle BE + Present Participle ( had been sitting) Negation: We insert particle NOT after the first auxiliary verb ( had not been sitting) Question: Inversion of the subject and the first auxiliary verb ( Had I been sitting) Use: 1) Longer action in the past before another action in the past * Tom had been waiting for two hours. * John was very tired. He had been running. * My car broke down. It hadn’t been running well for a long time. * Had the pilot been drinking before the crash' * I had been waiting for an hour by the time I received the reply. 2) Two actions happened in the past and we use PPC to clarify which action happened first * Mary looked tired. I could see that she had been studying for her English test recently. * The children were soaking wet. I knew they had been swimming in the lake. * Police had been tracking him for years and finally caught him. * Jones, who had been running, arrived out of breath. * I had been practicing for two days and was ready for the concert. 3) To make conclusions * There was a leak in the pipes, that’s why the water bill had been getting higher and higher each month. * The teacher looked very tired. She had been marking tests all day. * Her back was sore because she had been sitting at the computer all day. * Sam gained weight because he had been overeating. * Betty failed the final exam because she hadn’t been attending classes. 4) PPC can be interchangeable with the PPS without a change in meaning * I had slept/ had been sleeping all night. * I had lived/ had been living in Brazil before I moved to Serbia. 5) Answer the question ‘’how long’’ * How long had you been waiting for the bus to come' * How many years had you been studying to be a teacher' 6) In third conditional to express imagined conditionals * If I had been working on that project, we would have been successful. * She would have been ready for the test if she had been preparing diligently. * If I hadn’t been sleeping all day, I would have done my chores. Ekvivalent PPC-a u srpskom jeziku je pluskvamperfekat, kao u primerima * When they arrived, I had been studying for three hours already. Kada su stigli bila sam ucila vec tri sata. * Before I moved away, I had been living in New York. Pre nego sto sam se odselila bila sam zivela u Njujorku. …ali se ipak najcesce prevode sa nasim perfektom, i to nesvrsenim glagolski oblicima. * She had been working for three hours when you arrived. Radila je tri sata kada si ti stigao. * Susan had been thinking about the idea for a while when he made a decision. Suzan je neko vreme razmisljala o toj ideji pre nego sto je on doneo odluku. * I had been waiting for them for half an hour before they finally showed up. Cekala sam ih pola sata pre nego sto su se konacno pojavili. * Marry had been playing tennis for two hours before she sprained her ancle. Meri je igrala tenis dva sata pre nego sto je uganula clanak. * She had been studying French for two years before she got married. Studirala je francuski dve godine pre nego sto se udala.