OG12th SC50，关于该题使用过去完成时的疑问

chaseconsult

这题之前被讨论过，但是A选项为什么用过去完成时这个问题还没被解决，
所以特地再拿上来给NN们讨论讨论~~

50. According to some analysts, the gains in the stock market reflect growing confidence that the economy will avoid the recession that many had feared earlier in the year and instead come in for a “soft landing,” followed by a gradual increase in business activity.


(A) that the economy will avoid the recession that many had feared earlier in the year and instead come
(B) in the economy to avoid the recession, what many feared earlier in the year, rather to come
(C) in the economy’s ability to avoid the recession, something earlier in the year many had feared, and instead to come
(D) in the economy to avoid the recession many were fearing earlier in the year, and rather to come
(E) that the economy will avoid the recession that was feared earlier this year by many, with it instead coming

答案选A，但是，使用过去完成时的话，一般过去时会成对出现，在时间上作比较，但是主句里没有使用一般过去时阿。
求解释~

sevenmileser

顶起~~这道题我还真没揪这个时态~没深想，谢谢LZ拿出来！

kronorrt

我来完结下这题。
have是从过去到现在，
我们所知道的had都是说过去的过去，但是在这题有明显的时间标志词 earlier in the year,表明现在已经不怕了，所以时间轴是不能拉到现在的，用过去完成时。

tulip37

Good Q!  Below is what I got from a Manhattan GMAT staff
http://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/gains-in-stock-market-had-t10316.html
note that the past perfect can be used, roughly speaking, in two different circumstances:
1) for past actions that were ongoing until, or relevant to, a later past action (this is what you're thinking about);
OR
2) for past actions that were ongoing until, or relevant to, a later past TIME MARKER.
for #2, the second time marker could be something explicitly mentioned in the sentence.
before the introduction of soft landing mats, high jumpers had been forced to use the western-roll style of jumping
--> note that there is no second verb, but "the introduction of soft landing mats" is a time marker.
however, if the context of the sentence clearly IMPLIES a second time marker, then that second time marker may not even have to be mentioned explicitly.
in this sentence, the second time marker is implied by the phrase "earlier in the year" -- i.e., these fears were ongoing until a certain point that is already in the past.
--
as a final note, make sure you know that the difficulty of learning verb tenses -- not just in english but in any language -- is going to be vastly higher than the difficulty of learning almost anything else in a language.
verb tenses tend to encode extremely subtle information, and, worse, their usages vary wildly from language to language -- it's rare to find any two languages that have tenses exactly equivalent to one another.  (even in european languages that are closely related to english, different tenses are often used for the same situation than would be used in english.)