Question

What’s the difference between past perfect and past participle? Examples are helpful, but an explanation would be better.

Answer 1

Hint: There are three tenses in English – Present, Past and Future. Again, the three principle tenses are divided into simple, perfect, continuous (also known as progressive), and perfect continuous. A verb has different forms – Root/Base form, Present Participle form and Past and Past Participle forms.

Complete answer:
The main difference between Past Perfect and Past Participle is that Past perfect is a Tense whereas Past Participle is a verb form.

Past Perfect is one of the past tenses used to indicate that one of the two past actions took place before another in a sentence.
 Example: I had seen him twice before he left for New York.
Here, 'had seen' suggests that one action (seeing him) took place earlier than the other (he left for New York).

Past Participle is one of the verb forms (usually the third form in a table of irregular verbs).
It is used in perfect tenses and passive voice.
Examples: Past participle of the verb 'Write' is 'Written'.
John had broken a mirror. (Past participle)
This mirror was broken by John. (Passive Voice)

Note: While forming the past perfect tense, use the past tense of the verb ‘to have’, which is ‘had’, and add it to the past participle of the main verb, that is, subject + had + past participle = past perfect tense. Past participles are used when a verb is used in all Perfect Tenses and in the passive voice in English. For regular verbs, we usually add ‘-ed’ to form their past participle. Sadly, for irregular verbs, there are no rules and it is just a matter of practice (Ex: Sing, Sang and Sung).