I notice a great many American speakers using the construction had loved as a preterite, that is, a simple past tense. I also hear the simple past tense used in instances in which I was taught to use the past perfect tense.
Is this a widespread trend, to use the past perfect construction as a past tense construction, and to use the past tense instead of the past perfect tense to indicate action that precedes the past action that has just been mentioned?
Examples are
Before I met her I heard about her
instead of
Before I met her I had heard about her
and
I had heard about her yesterday for the first time."
Neither Microsoft Word nor WordPerfect likes it when I use the string had had. For example,
By the time he got to Phoenix, he had had enough to drink to make him stagger."
Is the past perfect disappearing from American usage? Is it also disappearing from British usage? And is the past perfect construction being widely used as a simple past?
Best Answer
This is my opinion as an American. The past perfect is not gone, but it is my impression that we don't use the past perfect when the simple past is sufficient to relay the intended meaning. Most of the time, as in your sentences, there are other constructions to supplement the simple past and convey it as perfect past.
The temporal marker "before" supplements "met", turning this simple past into the past perfect. But the following certainly wouldn't sound foreign to an American.
or, using the contraction...
As for the following...
This isn't past perfect. It's simple past, but an American might say the following.
Without the temporal marker "before", the past perfect is essential to convey the meaning. However, for that sentence to sound natural, I'd have to hear it as a response to a question, such as, "Didn't someone tell you about her?"
As for the following statement:
This is something that Word will fuss about and I'll ignore or modify to mollify. Word isn't the expert; it's a tool to help those who aren't. If you're an expert and Word is catching stuff, either it's wrong or you're too tired. An easy way to modify the above sentence and more closely resemble how I would actually speak it is to use a contraction.
On the other hand, you can turn the verb around.
The past perfect isn't gone in American English; we don't always use it when we don't have to.