Verb tenses and "Me before you" book
I've been reading "Me before you" and I've got a doubt about verb tenses.
There is this paragraph right in the beginning, on chapter 2:"Now, looking back, I couldn"t even remember having a discussion with him about money. He suggested a weekly wage, I agreed, and once a year he told me he'd upped it a bit, usually a little more than a would have asked for."
In "he'd upped it a bit", is that the short form of HE HAD? If that's the case, i'm finding it difficult to get the meaning of past perfect.
It would make more sense to me if it was "he'd UP it a bit", with the short form of HE WOULD and meaning past of WILL.
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Verb tenses and "Me before you" book
I've been reading "Me before you" and have a question about verb tenses.There is a paragraph at the start of chapter 2: "Now, looking back, I couldn"t even remember having a discussion with him about money. He suggested a weekly wage. I agreed, and once a year he told me he'd upped it a bit, usually a little more than (I?) would have asked for."
In "he'd upped it a bit", is that the short form of HE HAD? --No, it is not. -- If that's the case, i'm finding it difficult to get the meaning of past perfect.
(It would make more sense to me if it was "he'd UP it a bit", with the short form of HE WOULD and meaning past of WILL.). A good guess, but wrong.
= He had upped it a bit = he had increased it a bit. To up = to increase. Upped = increased.
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He'd can be short for "he had" or "he would." In this case it's "he had," and we can tell because the verb "to up (something)" is conjugated in the past tense.
The past perfect is used to describe an action in the past that happened before another action that is also in the past. So, "he told" happened at some point in the past. "He upped it" happened prior to "he told," so it becomes "he'd upped it." Once the person had told the narrator that the narrator's pay was being upped, the "upping" had already happened.
It would be grammatically correct to say "he'd up it," but that would carry a different meaning. That would mean that the "upping" would happen after the "telling."
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