Hi Shizuka,

Sorry I have been slow to respond to this one. For the first question, perhaps point was inaccurate, I think what I meant to say there was that the time might not be specifically defined. I.e. the duration could be specified (“two months”) or not (“many months”). So whilst it may always be used to show duration, it may not give us an exact duration, if that makes sense.

On the second question, no these would have different meanings. The past perfect continuous would tell us that duration was complete when the call interrupted it, but the past continuous would suggest the duration included the call (i.e. while she called, I was washing the car for an hour). The latter isn’t a particularly eloquent way to say it, but that would be the meaning.

On the third question, as with much in English, it’s all about context, and your ideas are right – it doesn’t have to be in the same sentence, and it may even merely be implied, if we understand the interruption through other means. So yes, you may have the past perfect continuous on its own without the interruption, depending on how we understand the context.

Best,

Phil

I have three queries concerning the past perfect continuous tense.

Firstly, I don’t quite get your statement when you said “The specific time is not always an exact point; in the example above, the duration is clear (for months), and the action was interrupted by giving up. Therefore the duration was for an action (reading the book) before the time that I gave up”. Isn’t it a case where a duration is always used with the present perfect continuous? If so, why then the need to say the specific time is not always an exact point? My argument being that the continuous aspect of this tense will need a duration to go along with it since a point in time can’t express the continuous aspect/duration.

Secondly, is it grammatically correct for me to say “I was washing the car for an hour when she called” to mean the same as “I had been washing the car for an hour when she called”? Do both sentences convey the same meaning in that the washing had been going on for an hour before/when “she” called?

Thirdly, while I understand that the past perfect con’t is used to express something which had been continuing for sometime before being interrupted by another time or action in the simple past, my question is whether is it necessary to mention the interruption within the same sentence as the past perfect con’t (as in “She had been working at that company for a year when she met James” or “I’d been walking for hours when I finally found the house”) as compared to a case where maybe a single sentence only contains the past perfect con’t and that the interruption isn’t mentioned in the same sentence as the past perfect con’t but instead shows up in the neighboring sentences such as “by the time Tom noticed the doorbell, it had already rung three times. As usual, he had been listening to loud music on his stereo. He turned the stereo down and stood up to answer the door” – here the past perfect con’t is interrupted by Tom’s action of turning down the stereo, but that this interruption (i.e. turning down the stereo) doesnt show up in the same sentence as the past perfect con’t action of “had been listening to loud music”. In otherwords, the interruption to the past perfect con’t can either be in adjacent sentences and not in the same sentence as the past perfect con’t action, or perhaps not even mentioned at all in the adjacent sentences but is clear from context. In this case, is such a use of past perfect con’t correct?

Appreciate your advice, thanks!

Regards,
Shizuka