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Query about Past perfect tense usage

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chaitanya.mehrotra
 Post subject: Query about Past perfect tense usage
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 1:32 pm 
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Students


Posts: 6
As per Man SC:Chapter 7, Problem Set -3,

Original Question:
Q: Mozarat, who died in 1791, has lived in Salzburg for most of his life.

Corrected versions:
1. Mozarat, who died in 1791, lived in Salzburg for most of his life.
2. Mozarat, who died in 1791, had lived in Salzburg for most of his life.

Doubt: Why is the past perfect version also correct. Ist the past tense itself is sufficient here.
We dont need to emphase the time frame , because the sequence of the past events is pretty obvious here! I think GMAT prefers simple tenses over progressive tenses
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rishabh26jain
 Post subject: Re: Query about Past perfect tense usage
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2011 2:28 pm 
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Forum Guests


Posts: 9
May be because "past perfect" is used not only to indicate the relative time of occurrences of events but also to indicate the "result / effect " of an event. Here, "had lived...for most of his life".

May be the author is emphasizing "had lived.... for most of his life".

If time is emphasized then "lived" is fine.
If the effect/experience is emphasized then "had lived" is preferred.
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jnelson0612
 Post subject: Re: Query about Past perfect tense usage
 Post Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2011 9:57 pm 
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ManhattanGMAT Staff


Posts: 1857
Check out the posts by Ron in this thread about past perfect. past-perfect-tense-use-t7698.html

It has a lot of relevant information to this question; pay particular attention to the part about "time markers", which is what we have in this question with the "died in 1791".

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Jamie Nelson
ManhattanGMAT Instructor
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