Past perfect X simple past X past perfect continuous

Pemmican wrote:

You use the Simple Past for an action or event which took place and was finished in the past, signal words are e.g.: yesterday, last year, ... ago: Yesterday, I went to school. Last year, he visited his uncle. He died in Spain two years ago. The Past Perfect Progressive is used to express an action that had been in progress (in the past) when another event in the past took place, so it expresses the background action: While he had been reading the book, his uncle came back home. While I had been doing my homework, it started to rain. The Past Perfect expresses an action or event that took place and had been finished in the past, already before another action took place. The more recent action is expressed in the Simple Past: After I had been to school, I visited my friend. Before I went to my friend, I had been to school.

Magic79 wrote:

1. While he had been reading the book, his uncle came back.  past perfect progressive                +                simple past                                                         What do you think of the following sentence: a. While he was reading the book, his uncle came back home.              past contiuous                 +                simple past

Hello Magic

I'm inclined to agree that the first sentence does sound a little strange; the second ("While he was...") sounds more natural.

Here are some typical examples of the progressive past perfect:

1. Mr Blunkett said he had been preparing to sacrifice his political career in order to pursue his paternity claim to Mrs Quinn's son.

— here, the PPP is a reported version of "I was preparing".

2. The impossibility of her quitting her father, Mr. Knightley felt as strongly as herself; but the inadmissibility of any other change, he could not agree to. He had been thinking it over most deeply, most intently...

— here, the PPP denotes a continuous activity that is past from the point of view of a later past activity.

3. If he hadn't been sitting in the back seat, where the drugs were found, would he have been arrested?

— here, the PPP occurs in a "type III" conditional: it denotes an imaginary past.

MrP

Thanks MrPedantic.

Thanks Marius.

So I guess we could use both without any difference in meaning:

1. While he was reading the book, his uncle came back.

and

2. While he had been reading the book, his uncle came back.

I could see myself reasoning that the use of the second example (past perfect) is justifed if we imagine the action READING happening before COMING.

1=2