Herb,
   I pretty much agree with your position on this. I'm wondering, though,
how you would define the term "correct".

Brad keeps saying that the grammar books are consistently wrong and even the best writers are wrong.

I rise to a point of order. Craig pretends to speak for me but he has spoken, on this one occasion, in error. I have not said "that the grammar books are consistently wrong". I have said over and over in exactly the same words as below, "there is at least one past perfect error on any grammar website or in any grammar textbook you can name. Challenges are welcome, encouraged, and appreciated".

What these "errors" (in quotes to accommodate Craig:) prove to me is that there is a widespread misunderstanding of a useful tense (call it what you will). If you can't define it, and explain it, and illustrate it, in a way that fits any and all circumstances, you don't understand it. That is what I said below about Lester. What other explanation is there? He doesn't get it.

.brad.08apr09.

You and I, I think, would say "correct" would mean something
like "in harmony with the best advice and the practices of our best
writers." You have also come up with clear examples of sentences that
NEED the past perfect to be meaningful (in the way the speaker
intended.) Would it be better to call that useful? Functional?

Craig>

Brad,
>
> This is the clearest statement you've made of your understanding of past
> perfect.  There are two problems with it.  First, it requires that both
> events be in the same sentence, so a two-clause sentence is required.  But
> a past perfect can be used correctly if the other event is in the context,
> even in the non-linguistic context.  Consider something like the
> following:
>
> A group of us at the conference decided to go to a movie one evening after
> sessions were over.  Most of the group wanted to see "Slum Dog
> Millionaire."  None of them had seen it.  I had.  I spent the evening
> reading the latest Alan Furst novel.
>
> Both past perfects occur in single clause sentences.  Both refer to a time
> before the decision.
>
> The second problem is that the past perfect can serve either as the past
> of the past or as the past of the present perfect.  Greenbaum (Oxford
> English Grammar, p. 273) illustrates this with the sentence
>
> Uh, had you realized before this meeting that uh the Scott Cooper's
> surveyor hadn't yet been to the premises?
>
> The first past perfect is a past of a past and the second a past of a
> present perfect.  (The uhs are in the original because Greenbaum's grammar
> uses almost exclusively example sentences from the International Corpus of
> English--Great Britain (ICEGB) and the Wall Street Journal.  They
> represent English usage from 1989-1993.  Greenbaum does not edit the
> examples.)
>
> Herb
>
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Brad Johnston
> Sent: 2009-04-08 09:25
> To: [log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]
> Subject: Lester's Grammar in the Classroom
>
> Grammar in the Classroom, by Mark Lester, c.1990.
>
> <page 100> Compare the following two sentences.
>
> Past: We went to the movies. right
>
> Past perfect: We had gone to the movies when you called. right
>
> <page 102> Consider the following sentences.
>
> John has brushed his teeth. right
>
> Phil had ordered breakfast. wrong*
>
> <page 103> Verb Phrase: had been working = past perfect progressive right
> (no capital letter, no period)
>
> <page 104> 9. He had nearly wrecked the turntable. wrong*
>
> Exercise 3.4, #4: The company had invented a new mousetrap. wrong*
>
> <page 236> Exercise 6.4
>
> #2: John had brushed his teeth. wrong*
>
> #4: A student had reported the accident. wrong*
>
> <page 238> Exercise 6.5
>
> #9. It had touched a nerve. wrong*
>
> I have read that this is the most widely-used grammar textbook in the
> land. What I've shown above is a mere sampling but it's enough to know
> that the author either doesn't understand the past perfect or .. or what?
> Could there be any other explanation?
>
> This is Exhibit #102 to my assertion that there is at least one past
> perfect error on any grammar website or in any grammar textbook you can
> name. Challenges are welcome, encouraged, and appreciated.
>
> .brad.08apr09.
>
> * The example sentences marked wrong* are incorrect because they stand
> alone, without context. The past perfect is used to denote that an earlier
> past event was completed before a later past event. None of the sentences
> so marked have the necessary two timing elements. The correct sentence
> above, We had gone to the movies when you called, has two elements of
> timing: (1) when we went to the movies and (2) when you called, both
> completed in the past, one before the other.
>
> "By the time something happened, something else had already happened."