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Simple Past and Past Perfect

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rishabh26jain
 Post subject: Simple Past and Past Perfect
 Post Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2011 2:01 pm 
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What is the difference between the following two sentences ?? Is there a difference in emphasis ???


Past Perfect :
Until 1984, he had not finished his education.

Simple Past :
Not Until 1984 did he finish his education.


What's wrong with the following sentence ?

Not Until 1984 had he finished his education.
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tim
 Post subject: Re: Simple Past and Past Perfect
 Post Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2011 4:54 pm 
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ManhattanGMAT Staff


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The first and third sentences are basically indistinguishable, and both are wrong for the same reason. Word order is very fluid in a sentence that expresses this thought, and the first and third sentence can both be rephrased as ”He had not finished his education until 1984”. Because you can get by with simple past in this case (which is why the second one is okay), the sentences with past perfect are incorrect..

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Tim Sanders
Manhattan GMAT Instructor
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