had vs no had - what is the difference [duplicate]
When the past perfect is used in its primary role of specifying purely temporal relations,1 it expresses double anteriority.
1Other major uses of the past perfect include backshifting in reported speech (e.g. she said she had had too many commitments) and expressing modal remoteness, i.e. that something is counterfactual (I wish I had accepted her offer), or that something is not an open possibility.
In order to make it more apparent what is going on, I will replace the verb issue by the verb write. I do this because it will be less confusing if the past tense form of the verb and the past participle form are different, as they are for write (wrote vs written) but not for issue (which is a regular verb, so both forms are issued).
Simple past vs. past perfect
I will be following the discussion in CGEL, p 140.
When you use the simple past,
[1] Under Roth's direction, the press Chamber wrote several decrees to domestic news
outlets in the weeks leading up to the ceremony.
there are two times being talked about: the time of orientation (To), which in [1] coincides with the time of utterance, and the time referred to (Tr), which in [1] is the time when the press Chamber wrote the decrees. The meaning of the past tense is to say that Tr < To.
But when you use the past perfect,
[2] Under Roth's direction, the press Chamber had written several decrees to domestic news
outlets in the weeks leading up to the ceremony.
there are three distinct times being talked about. Actually, there are even four, but two of them coincide. The temporal structure is as follows:
Tr2 < To2=Tr1 < To1.
The most recent time is To1, the first time of orientation. It is once again identified with the time of utterance.
The time that is the most distant in the past is Tr2, identified as the time when the press Chamber wrote the decree.
Finally, there is the intermediate time To2=Tr1. It has two roles. First, it is the time referred to by the past tense had; second, it is also the time of orientation for the perfect written.
Thus we have a double anteriority: the time when the press Chamber wrote the decree is anterior to an intermediate time, which in turn is anterior to the time of utterance.
Given just the isolated sentence [2], it is not clear that we have enough information to deduce what this intermediate time is. What we do know for sure is that there is an intermediate time that the speaker thinks is relevant to the message he or she is trying to convey. Nevertheless, one could argue that the most natural reading is that the intermediate time is the time of the ceremony.2
2Thanks to Peter Shor for pointing this out.
An example where it really matters whether we use the simple past or the past perfect
Consider the following sentences:
[3] a. She left the country before she wrote her thesis.
b. She left the country before she had written her thesis.
The difference in meaning is as follows: [3i] indicates that the leaving preceded the whole of the thesis writing, whereas [3ii] allows, and in fact suggests, that she had already started writing when she left (CGLE, p. 147).