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iloveyou
Joined: 05 Aug 2006
Posts: 72
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 Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 10:39 pm Post subject: ~ that I have ever met |
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Hello,
My textbook shows a sentence
"He was one of the smartest I have ever met"
Shouldn't this be?
either
He was one of the smartest I had ever met or
He is one of the smartest I have ever met....
Thanks
Yun |
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dragn
Joined: 17 Feb 2009
Posts: 450
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| Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 6:36 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
My textbook shows a sentence
"He was one of the smartest I have ever met"
Shouldn't this be?
either
He was one of the smartest I had ever met or
He is one of the smartest I have ever met.... |
No, it's fine. In fact, all three of the sentences you wrote are absolutely fine, and suitable for slightly different contexts. I'll leave you to ponder the nature of those contexts. 
Greg |
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iloveyou
Joined: 05 Aug 2006
Posts: 72
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| Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 7:39 am Post subject: I understand the context of two sentences... |
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but, not sure about the first one.
My textbook shows a sentence
"He was one of the smartest I have ever met"
I met him in the past...
and he is the smartest among the people I have met so far..
(did I answer right?)
Shouldn't this be?
either
He was one of the smartest I had ever met or
--> At one point at past I met him,
and he was the smartest among the people I had met before
He is one of the smartest I have ever met....
--> I know him at present...
he is the smartest among the people I have met so far. |
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redset
Joined: 18 Mar 2006
Posts: 582
Location: England
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| Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 1:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
My textbook shows a sentence
"He was one of the smartest I have ever met"
I met him in the past...
and he is the smartest among the people I have met so far..
(did I answer right?) |
The clue is that you changed the tense here in the underlined part...
'...I have ever met' refers to your experience so far, up to the present moment. It's still true right now.
'...I had ever met' means that it was true up to some point in the past, but then something changed.
One reason to use the simple past is to talk about something that was true in the past but isn't now, or to say that something existed in the past but no longer does:
'That cake was delicious!'
This can either mean that something happened to make the cake taste worse (we'd usually give some information about this), or that the cake no longer exists so we can only talk about it in the past tense - contrasted with 'this cake is delicious'.
You might have an idea what I'm getting at now .
"He was one of the smartest I had ever met" - at the time I hadn't met many people who were smarter, but something about that has changed.
"He is one of the smartest I have ever met" - I haven't met many people who are smarter than him.
"He was one of the smartest I have ever met" - I haven't met many people who are smarter than him (it's still true), but he no longer exists... |
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