Today doing some English grammar exercises I stumbled upon the two examples in The passive section:
It is believed that the children had been hiding for two weeks.
It was thought that the book had been destroyed.
The thing that puzzles me much is the usage of Past Perfect in the first sentence
had been hiding
and, probably, in the second sentence
had been destroyed
I had been searching over the Internet for several hours without any comprehensive answer found.
Would anyone please give a reference to the rule that explains the usage of Past Perfect in constructions like that?
The other related case is the following:
The athlete was alleged to have cheated
I'm sorry for what I said. I was trying to be funny. It was supposed to be a joke
The book was thought to have been destroyed
Why can't I say respectively the following:
The athlete was alleged to cheat
It was supposed to have been a joke
The book was thought to be destroyed
I'm able to easily find the rules on more simple constructions like It is thought that … + Present Indefinite / Present Perfect but no comprehensive sources on similar but + Past Perfect
The book with exercises is highly recognizable btw but it doesn't give the answer
Thanks
Best Answer
The past perfect is used to situate something in the distant past, i.e. in the past, prior to something else that happened in the past. Your two example sentences are incomplete. Here's what a complete version might look like:
would work, but your sentence isn't right. (You might hear it in informal speech, though.)
This is fine. You could also say
which means the same as "It was intended to be a joke."
would work, but the way you wrote it does not work.