Professor Dave again, let’s use the pluperfect.
Even though we have learned a number of tenses for dealing with action in the past, we have
one more.
This tense is called trapassato prossimo.
When we look at the word trapassato, if we take the prefix as being derived from trans,
meaning beyond, and recall that passato means past, we can see how this is similar to the
English name for this tense, the pluperfect, as plu comes from the Latin “plus”, which
means more, and perfect implies that something is completed.
So literally, the name of this tense means “more past than the past”.
In English we refer to this tense as past perfect.
In any case, we must be comparing two actions, where one of them appears to be more past
than another.
Now let’s learn how to use this tense.
First, recall that passato prossimo is constructed with the auxiliary essere or avere, plus a
form of the past participle.
The trapassato is another compound tense like this, and follows the same construction.
We just need a form of the auxiliary to make the action more past than the previous one.
This can be achieved by substituting the present form of “to have” or “to be” with
the imperfect of the same.
All the other rules that you already know about participles still apply.
To quickly review, these rules tell us that the past participle will agree in gender and
number with intransitive verbs using “essere”, as well as with reflexive or reciprocals.
The past participle will not agree with verbs using “avere”, unless preceded by a direct
object pronoun.
And there will never be an agreement with indirect object pronouns.
Let’s apply this to three verbs, going through the conjugation for each one.
The first is scrivere, a transitive verb, taking avere.
The second verb is tornare, an intransitive verb, taking essere.
Lastly, the third verb, divertirsi, is reflexive.
All reflexive verbs take essere.
Now let’s create some situations where one could use the trapassato prossimo.
In all of these situations, two actions in the past are described, but one of them had
already happened before the other one took place.
English can get away with using just one past tense for these situations, but Italian is
much more prescise.
The action that had already happened first is the one that will require trapassato prossimo.
And that’s all we need to know about trapassato prossimo, so let’s check comprehension.