Should the tense of predicate in main clause be the same as the tense of predicate in the relative clause?


It is a very basic question that I need to be confirmed. Consider the
following sentence (taken from a book titled _Essential Japanese Grammar_ by
**Masahiro Tanimori** and **Eriko Sato** ).

> スミスさんが昨日見た学生は背が高かった。

The relative clause スミスさんが昨日見た modifies 学生 with past tense. The main clause
also uses past tense 高かった.

If I translate it to English, it becomes

> The student whom Smith saw yesterday was tall.

For me it sounds a bit awkward because the student may no longer be tall now.

# Question

  * Should the tense in relative clauses agree with the tense in main clause?

  * Compare to the previous one, what is the difference in meaning and nuance for スミスさんが昨日見た学生は背が高い。?




In Japanese, the tenses don't need to agree, and in fact, **tense mismatches
can serve an important purpose**.

In English, we have a wide variety of verb tenses, i.e., 3 (past present
future) x 4 (simple progressive perfect perfect-progressive) = 12 basic time
tenses. Japanese learners of English sometimes wonder why we have so many.

However, consider the following:  
"I have not heard that before"  
聞いた事がありません

The English version uses perfect present. The Japanese version uses mixed
tenses (聞いた is past, ありません is present). **So sometimes mixed tenses in
Japanese give us additional time-tense flexibility** , the same way that the
non-simple tenses give us in English!

On a side note, the English non-simple tenses actually have "mixed tenses"
hidden in them. E.g., in "have not heard", the "heard" is actually a past-like
form called the "past participle", but "have" is present tense.




No, tense doesn't need to agree beyond clauses.

The original sentence refers to smith's memory, rather than a permanent fact.
That's why it adopts past tense.

