Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: were repairing / had been repairing

What tense would you use for the verb "repair" in the following sentence?
   "They [repair] the bridge when I last tried to drive across it."
 
I would say "were repairing", but the original sentence is
   "They had been repairing the bridge when I last tried to drive across 
it."
 
That doesn't sound right to me because "when" indicates contemporaneity, 
which is contradicted by the use of the past perfect (continuous) "had 
been repairing".
 
Adding the word "still" makes this even more evident:
   "They were still repairing the bridge when I last tried to drive 
across it."
 
I'd only use the past perfect in a sentence like
   "They had already started repairing the bridge when I last tried to 
drive across it."
 
-- 
Kiuhnm
 

 drive across it."
 
Of course now the repair is not past perfect continuous even though the 
action may be continuing. It "had started" as a past perfect event. You 
have "concordanza" because one event in the past perfect happened before 
another event in the simple past.
 
Come in italiano, i frasi in inglese seguono la concordanza dei tempi. 
Ricordo d'aver visto delle differenze tra le due lingue, ma non riesco a 
ricordare un esempio. Purtroppo, gioco con l'italiano solamente 
casualmente allora la comprensione metodica è improbabile.
 
D'altronde, ti interessa ad esaminare le regole grammaticali con provi 
particolari che, se riesci sempre a ricordare i risultati, ti daronno 
una comprensione della grammatica inglese migliore della maggior parte 
degli americani.
 

 degli americani.
 
Purtroppo le differenze tra i tempi italiani e inglesi sono sufficienti 
da creare non pochi problemi.
Per es:
1. Ieri ho incontrato Luca. Non lo vedevo dalle superiori.
2. Mi ha detto che mi avrebbe ritelefonato.
Una traduzione 1-1 sarebbe disastrosa:
- *I've run into Luca yesterday. I ?? him since high school.
- *He/she told me he/she would've called me back.
 
La concordanza tra i tempi è simile probabilmente per via delle radici 
latine in comune, ma ci sono comunque tantissime differenze. Inoltre, la 
forma progressiva è particolarmente difficile da padroneggiare per un 
italiano.
 
-- 
Kiuhnm
 

 the inferior "had started repairing", which is not a continuous form.
 
Maybe "This is the example I had been trying to come up with". I still 
have these silly doubts about tenses...
 
-- 
Kiuhnm
 

 italiano.
 
In inglese si usa spesso questi tempi. Sarebbe naturale per me dire 
"cosa stai faccendo?" invece di "cosa fai?"
 

 have these silly doubts about tenses...
 
It depends on the distance in the past you were trying to come up with it.
 
 
 

 "cosa stai faccendo?" invece di "cosa fai?"
 
In questo caso non sbaglieresti.
 
-- 
Kiuhnm
 

 
 
This sounds better to me, because "I had been trying" focuses on the 
activity.
 
For example:
 
"I was painting my room when the doorbell rang"
 
versus
 
"I had been painting my room, so my T-shirt was dirty"


Yours are classical examples where there's little to no doubt as to 
what's the more approriate form, but I'm not convinced the same can be 
said for my case.
I don't think the past perfect (progressive or not) is used that much in 
informal English.
For example,
   "I was trying to sound smart, but I came across as a complete ass."
sounds more natural, at least to me, than
   "I had been trying to sound smart, but I came across as a complete ass."
It's possible my intuition is failing me, or maybe it's a BrE/AmE 
difference.
 
-- 
Kiuhnm