During studies I recently stumbled over this sentence:

> 大きな犬がこっちに走ってきたので、びっくりした。

My question is why きた is used in 走ってきた. I would have guessed it should be a
きていた, as びっくりした is past tense and 走って happens before that.

It was explained to me that, that to きていた is used to form the past perfect
tense, while きた would form the present perfect. Thus I am confused.
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question
tense
Helping verb きた vs. きていた
First of all, verbs in Japanese have only two tenses, past and non-past. The
latter is also known as the “present” tense, although it is also used to
describe a future event.

Secondly, as you may have already learned, [V て-form]-いる can mean many
different things depending on the verb and/or the context. [V て-form]-いた is
simply its past version and it also can mean many different things.

Replacing きた with きていた makes a grammatical sentence.

> 大きな犬がこっちに **走ってきていた** ので、びっくりした。

However, it probably won’t be understood the way you want it to be. Because of
the verb 走る, which describes a visible action, 走ってきていた will more likely be
understood as describing a progressive action in the past.

> I was startled because a large dog **was running up** toward me.

きていた without 走る can be understood as referring to a past state that resulted
from an earlier action, in this case that of 来る, and this might be translated
using the past perfect tense in English.

> 大きな犬がこっちに **きていた** ので、びっくりした。  
>  I was startled because a large dog **had come** where I was.

The simple past tense is fine in the original sentence (and in its English
translation) because it is meant to describe an action that happened at one
point of time in the past.

> 大きな犬がこっちに **走ってきた** ので、びっくりした。  
>  I was startled because a large dog **ran up** toward me.
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answer