The subjunctive pluperfect is a tense that is mostly used in literature in the third person singular, and this is its main difficulty. It allows us to express an uncertain action that is in principle carried out at the moment of speaking.
Je ne pensais pas qu'il eût terminé à temps.
In a sentence where the main proposition is at the imperfect of the indicative, we use the subjunctive pluperfect in the subordinate to remain consistent with the concordance of tenses.
In order to be able to form the subjunctive pluperfect, it is necessary to know how to conjugate the auxiliaries "avoir" and "être" to the imperfect subjunctive and how to form the past participle. The main difficulties with the subjunctive pluperfect come from its limited use in literature and from the agreements with the past participle. Note the circumflex accent with "it": il eût fini and il fût parti.
Here is an example of a verb conjugated in the subjunctive pluperfect with auxiliaries "avoir" and "être":
Subject | Auxiliary (avoir) | Past participle (finir) |
---|---|---|
que j' | eusse | fini |
que tu | eusses | fini |
qu'il | eût | fini |
que nous | eussions | fini |
que vous | eussiez | fini |
qu'ils | eussent | fini |
Subject | Auxiliary (être) | Past participle (venir) |
---|---|---|
que je | fusse | venu |
que tu | fusses | venu |
qu'il | fût | venu |
que nous | fussions | venus |
que vous | fussiez | venus |
qu'ils | fussent | venus |