What is the difference between "past perfect" and "preterite perfect"?

Question

I notice both of these 'tenses' when I use the Conjugate at this site.

Example: "Dar"

Under Past Perfect: "habia dado"

Under Preterite Perfect: "hube dado"

Answer 1

Easy: what this site calls the preterite perfect is rarely used nowadays, except occasionally in literature. Except for a subtle difference in time proximity, you can always replace this tense with the past perfect.

Answer 2

Okay, I'm totally guessing here, so take this with a grain of salt. (But at the same time, I am trying to make sense of it myself and these are the conclusions I reached).

Present Perfect

Since the "present perfect" is combining present tense of haber with past participle, then a verb like "ha dado" would be "have given" (same as our present perfect).

Past Perfect

This combines the imperfect of haber (había) with the past participle. Imperfect usually indicates an action was not completed at the time we are referring to. So "había dado" would translate into English as "had given" but with a flavor more akin to something like "had been in the process of giving."

Preterite Perfect

This combines the preterite of haber (hubo) with the past participle. Normally, preterite and imperfect translate the same into English, but have different senses in Spanish. Preterite puts more emphasis on the fact that an action was completed at time we are referring to. So, "hubo dado" would still translate into English as "had given" but would not carry with it the sense that the action was in process at the time being referred to.

Again, remember, this is me theorizing about the difference. I am self-taught in Spanish and have only been studying for between 3 to 4 years.

what this site calls the preterite perfect is rarely used nowadays...

That's good to know. And would mean that we can generally translate our own pluperfect (which apparently can be past perfect or preterite perfect) into the "había" form.

Just to mention it the subjunctive also has a past perfect tense (hubiera, hubiese+PP) so our English past perfect tense is not always the pluscuamperfecto del indicativo (había+PP). - 0074b507, Jan 16, 2011

Answer 3

hube dado=pretérito anterior=antepréterito

había dado=préterito pluscuamperfecto=antecopretérito

pluscuamperfecto

discussion on antepretérito or pretérito anterior

¡Bienvenido al foro!

Welcome to the forum!

Sorry, I misread your question at first, thinking that you were referring to the simple tenses. - 0074b507, Jan 16, 2011

Answer 4

best answer ive found: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090209095453AA7V0Ob

place the ladies (Cherry B) answers into a word file and put in columns to really see the difference.

This answer is interesting, but not the answer to the question asked. The question in the link is the difference between the past perfect, preterite and imperfect tenses, not past perfect and preterite perfect - rolsteele, Jul 31, 2013