Can "had been uncontactable" replace "was uncontactable"?

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Ms Fang travelled alone to Xabia and was uncontactable since April 10. She left Singapore on April 4 and was due to return on April 12.

Can “had been uncontactable” replace “was uncontactable”?

Thanks.

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I would say using ‘had been’ and ‘was’ convey the same meaning, only ‘had been + since’ is, in my opinion, more ‘grammarly correct’. However, I’d like to rephrase the initial sentence you gave as follows:

Ms Fang travelled alone to Xabia and as of April 10 she was uncontactable. She left Singapore on April 4 and was due to return on April 12.
As for ‘uncontactable’, I’d prefer using ‘unreachable’.

What do you say? @Anglophile and @Arinker?

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Yes, since requires the perfect tense construction.

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Yes, Marc, unreachable is more common.

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Thank you, Lawrence and Arinker for being such good friends.

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I would say:

Has been unreachable since April 10
or
Was unreachable after April 10

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In my view, April 10 (2024) having already passed and the situation having become remote, the past perfect is justifiable grammatically and semantically.

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8

‘Since’ is continuous.

“Since April 10” implies that Ms Fang is still unreachable.

For it to be entirely in the past, you could use before, prior, between, during.

Ms Fang had been unreachable before April
Ms Fang had been unreachable prior to April
Ms Fang had been unreachable between April and May.
Ms Fang had been unreachable during the months of April and May.

This is all assuming that the frame of reference is in the present, but there is nothing to suggest it is not.

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9

I think there is some missing context that would help shape the sentence.

Ms Fang travelled alone to Xabia and has been unreachable since April 10. She is still missing.

Ms Fang travelled alone to Xabia and had been unreachable since April 10. She was located recently.

BTW, while I feel “unreachable “ is better than “uncontactable”, my preference would be for “out of contact”.

Ms Fang travelled alone to Xabia and had been out of contact since April 10.

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Some of this stuff makes me envy languages that don’t have tense. It can be a real mess sometimes.

There are also languages, like Japanese, that don’t have plural nouns. I’ll ask one of my Japanese students if they have something similar to noun-verb agreement.

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You right! If only I could tell you how many tense mistakes native speakers of Dutch/Flemish Niederlandisch make.

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