As of April

  2014, they were married and divorced. Three years later they divorced. What were their consequences?  

The difference between had married and were married, is that with “were”, we are saying they became married – that is, the acquired the adjective of “married” – they went from being not married, to being married.

Is there any construction to “they had X” that requires an object? So, you could say “They had married their partner” or “They gotten married” (in which case “gotten” is the verb, and “married” is the object). But “they had married” is not a complete sentence. Usually.

Brian Hitchcock explains in another answer what is wrong with the sentence, and makes the point that “They had married, they had married” can be correct, depending on context – firstly, in that the object can be implied rather than stated, in which case you are saying they had married two (each other) in 2006.

Do there have been any differences between parsing a sentence and removing the quotation marks? I’ve been thinking of it as being in the past progressive tense but you can also read it in the past perfect tense, in which case “married” changes from being something they did to something they have done In that case, had married would be actually correct, but it would be completely incorrect. Getting married is a more common usage though as, colloquially, marriage is usually spoken of in the past progressive – at least it is in my experience as an English speaker living in Britain.

Tahiti:

“Little is more than one person is correct, depending on context.” (Little is more than one.) Both are correct, depending on context. A sounds great like a native speaker.

Q2) Both, again depending on context. Usually it’s a verb, sometimes it’s an adjective, very rarely it can be an adverb. In your world, treat it as a verb.