“The people who built the temple have vanished a long time ago.”
Is the above sentence correct?
Or should I say:
“The people who built the temple had vanished a long time ago.”
Both are acceptable. It depends on the rest of the conversation/paragraph.
Hi,
There is a clash between ‘a long time ago’ and ‘have vanished’. The time expression ‘a long time ago’ suggests a time in the past and a natural consequence would be to use the past simple in the second verb = ‘vanished’.
Alan
Mr. Alan
According to you,
- “The people who built the temple vanished a long time ago.” is alone correct.
Am I right? ‘ago’ will not be expressed in present perfect tense.
2 sentence must be as below:
“It was said that the people who built the temple had vanished a long time ago.”
The past perfect sentence should have one recent past and one distant past.
Is my observation correct?
Hi,
I see your point as you are creating a sentence as if it is in reported speech in (2) but I think that making the tense of ‘vanish’ past perfect is not needed since ‘built’ and ‘vanished’ can both be in the past simple without causing any confusion.
Alan