0

I was reading a book and I can't understand why past perfect is used in the sentence below:

The signal from successive eclipse has less and less distance to travel, so it arrives earlier than if Jupiter had remained at a constant distance.

Why can't it be...if Jupiter would remain...?

tchrist
  • 134,759
Caro
  • 1
  • Simply because that is ungrammatical here in standard English. – tchrist Aug 29 '21 at 17:26
  • 1
    First, that sentence has other grammatical problems with it. (The plural agreement isn't correct, so it might not have been written by a native English speaker. It should be from successive eclipses*, which could lead to several other changes to the sentence.) And would* is wrong; in standard English, we only use would in an if clause when it means willing to. – Peter Shor Aug 29 '21 at 17:27
  • It can't be would; but it could be remained, simple past, instead of had remained. The past perfect in subordinate clauses is rarely necessary in speech; past will do unless there's an unusual situation. – John Lawler Aug 29 '21 at 17:35
  • The only reason I can see for using had remained rather than remained is that the light from the eclipse takes time to get from Jupiter to Earth. But this is a pretty slim reason; since Jupiter is moving much more slowly than the speed of light, the one would expect that the travel time of light could be ignored in this situation. – Peter Shor Aug 29 '21 at 17:38
  • Caro, I recommend you visit our sister site for [ell.se]. – tchrist Aug 29 '21 at 17:44

0 Answers0