two English grammatical questions! Thanks!

[languist]

I already provided an example sentence that shows at its simplest you can have a sentence with "had" that doesn't refer to a subsequent event. I'll give another one. "John had had sex." That's clearly saying "John isn't getting any anymore." It conveys a complete thought and is completely independent of being related to another past event. It may be that some event caused his celibacy, or maybe after some time it just became evident he wasn't having sex anymore.

I don't think this conveys that John isn't having sex anymore at all, just that he had sex at some point in the past. In fact, I would almost expect the sentence to be "John had had sex before, but this was different (etc, etc)".

[Cainntear]

{citation needed}
If you can find any reliable source that backs up your claim, I would be very interested, because every single source I've seen describes it in similar terms to the British Council link above, and as an English teacher, I need to know if my sources are wrong.

I already provided an example sentence that shows at its simplest you can have a sentence with "had" that doesn't refer to a subsequent event. I'll give another one. "John had had sex." That's clearly saying "John isn't getting any anymore." It conveys a complete thought and is completely independent of being related to another past event. It may be that some event caused his celibacy, or maybe after some time it just became evident he wasn't having sex anymore.

You had provided an example sentence, but it felt completely unnatural to me. Now you have provided another, and it feels equally unnatural to me.

Modern grammar references are written descriptively, i.e. based on reporting observed patterns. These are taken from massive corpora of genuine native language, so it's highly unlikely that they would repeat this if it was not the normal usage of the language, and one single solitary person angrily shouting otherwise on the internet is not going to have me change my mind.

If you can't find me an academic reference, then at least provide an example from real usage, not one you made up yourself specifically to justify your point.

Now you know they are. Because before you make a proclamation about what a particular construction does or requires, you need to look for all the exceptions you can find.

Then find me exceptions -- don't just invent them. I could invent an example that shows that "had" has future meaning (e.g. "I had do it tomorrow") but because it's not real language it doesn't prove anything.

Whoever wrote the page on the British Council obviously failed to do that. And it didn't even take me that much effort to find the exceptions.

Then as I said, give real-world examples.

When you consider the base claim that it is somehow dependent on a subsequent past event, and then find the exceptions to it, it's clear that the only thing it does is indicate completion.

Here's a counter-example to your claimed rule:
Didn’t Inter win the league titles under Mourinho when Juventus were rebounding from just returning to Serie A?
...
and had already won 3 in a row prior to his arrival.
There is no completion implied in the "had already won" because they continued to win. It was only a tally of wins to that point.

And that's what the perfect aspect does. The mistake here is treating it as if it is only a tense.

Yes, but the perfect aspect comes from combination of auxiliary have and a past participle. The tense comes from the tense applied to auxiliary have -- here the past. The core use of the past perfect is literally to the past what the present perfect is to the present.

Where the present perfect indicates completion, its equivalent past perfect indicates completion before a specified (or strongly implied) point in the past. Where the present perfect doesn't indicate completion, neither does its past perfect equivalent.

[romeo.alpha]

OK, I thought you were saying that he no longer writes, but you meant that he no longer writes those specific books. Right?

I still don't agree that the has/had distinction relates in any way to whether or not he's done writing. "John has/had written several novels." implies he's finished them.

Had definitely means there's completion (and that's what perfect means). Has leaves it open, that's the distinction.

[romeo.alpha]

I already provided an example sentence that shows at its simplest you can have a sentence with "had" that doesn't refer to a subsequent event. I'll give another one. "John had had sex." That's clearly saying "John isn't getting any anymore." It conveys a complete thought and is completely independent of being related to another past event. It may be that some event caused his celibacy, or maybe after some time it just became evident he wasn't having sex anymore.

I don't think this conveys that John isn't having sex anymore at all, just that he had sex at some point in the past. In fact, I would almost expect the sentence to be "John had had sex before, but this was different (etc, etc)".

If all you say is "John had had sex." with the period right there as I had it in the quote, it's clear nothing more is coming. If you're doing it with a comma, and following with something else, that's also fine, but the additional information you're getting that changes it doesn't come from the "had" (either one).

You can simplify it even more. "John had sex." Period. That means the sex is finished. It doesn't mean it happened before any other specific event, just that it happened in the past.

[languist]

I already provided an example sentence that shows at its simplest you can have a sentence with "had" that doesn't refer to a subsequent event. I'll give another one. "John had had sex." That's clearly saying "John isn't getting any anymore." It conveys a complete thought and is completely independent of being related to another past event. It may be that some event caused his celibacy, or maybe after some time it just became evident he wasn't having sex anymore.

I don't think this conveys that John isn't having sex anymore at all, just that he had sex at some point in the past. In fact, I would almost expect the sentence to be "John had had sex before, but this was different (etc, etc)".

If all you say is "John had had sex." with the period right there as I had it in the quote, it's clear nothing more is coming. If you're doing it with a comma, and following with something else, that's also fine, but the additional information you're getting that changes it doesn't come from the "had" (either one).

You can simplify it even more. "John had sex." Period. That means the sex is finished. It doesn't mean it happened before any other specific event, just that it happened in the past.

"John had had sex.", with no other context, simply means that John has had sex at some point in his life; there is no indication that he is no longer sexually active.

"John had sex.", with no other context, is now speaking about a specific event.

[romeo.alpha]

Modern grammar references are written descriptively, i.e. based on reporting observed patterns. These are taken from massive corpora of genuine native language, so it's highly unlikely that they would repeat this if it was not the normal usage of the language, and one single solitary person angrily shouting otherwise on the internet is not going to have me change my mind.

You might need to question whether the sources you're referring to actually are descriptive, when they're operating on prescritptions. What I'm saying about "had" is descriptive. What you're arguing with it being something like Vorvergangenheit in German is a prescription.

If you can't find me an academic reference, then at least provide an example from real usage, not one you made up yourself specifically to justify your point.

You seem to be confused about what descriptive grammar is. I'm a native speaker of English. Anything I say in English is real usage.

There is no completion implied in the "had already won" because they continued to win. It was only a tally of wins to that point.

You're completely wrong here. In fact I'll be impressed if you manage to be even more wrong with a subsequent argument. "Won" by itself explicitly denotes completion. You don't even need "had" for that.

Yes, but the perfect aspect comes from combination of auxiliary have and a past participle. The tense comes from the tense applied to auxiliary have -- here the past. The core use of the past perfect is literally to the past what the present perfect is to the present.

No, perfect aspect is from the perspective of the speaker. It's relative to the present, not to the past, unless you explicitly state the point on the timeline (which you can also move to the future).

[romeo.alpha]

"John had had sex.", with no other context, simply means that John has had sex at some point in his life; there is no indication that he is no longer sexually active.

"John had sex.", with no other context, is now speaking about a specific event.

There's no reason to say that with no other context unless you were making fun of him for not having sex anymore.

[languist]

"John had had sex.", with no other context, simply means that John has had sex at some point in his life; there is no indication that he is no longer sexually active.

"John had sex.", with no other context, is now speaking about a specific event.

There's no reason to say that with no other context unless you were making fun of him for not having sex anymore.

With no other context, this sentence actually can't exist on its own. Only if we mentally fill in the gaps, "John had had sex (at some point in his life)", and in this case, I would never expect the intended meaning to be making fun of him for not having sex anymore, unless we had been provided with a lot more context.

[romeo.alpha]

With no other context, this sentence actually can't exist on its own. Only if we mentally fill in the gaps, "John had had sex (at some point in his life)", and in this case, I would never expect the intended meaning to be making fun of him for not having sex anymore, unless we had been provided with a lot more context.

No sentence with a proper noun can exist on its own without context. The moment you name someone, the context of who that person is becomes necessary. So there's really nothing significant that you're saying with this sentence not being able to exist on its own.

[languist]

With no other context, this sentence actually can't exist on its own. Only if we mentally fill in the gaps, "John had had sex (at some point in his life)", and in this case, I would never expect the intended meaning to be making fun of him for not having sex anymore, unless we had been provided with a lot more context.

No sentence with a proper noun can exist on its own without context. The moment you name someone, the context of who that person is becomes necessary. So there's really nothing significant that you're saying with this sentence not being able to exist on its own.

Sarah played football yesterday. <-- gives me all the context I need to know, it's a stand-alone sentence. I don't need to know who Sarah is for this to be a fully formed and meaningful sentence.

"John had had sex." does not have any real meaning without other context, and certainly doesn't express the idea which you mentioned, of making fun of someone for being celibate...

I think we're going to go round in circles here. The sentence doesn't mean what you think it means, but I'm not sure that I can explain that ad infinitum, so let's agree to disagree.