"He is dead" or "He was dead"

Question

Aladdin's uncle was dead long ago but his mother said "he is dead" instead of "he was dead", why?

... Aladdin ran all the way home. "Mother," he cried. "I have an uncle."
His mother looked at him in surprise. "No, you don't," she said. "Your father had a brother, but he is dead. I never had any brothers." ...

Deadrat · Accepted Answer

Because he's still dead.

Chopsticks1942 · Answer

Is the grammar still correct if I change the sentence to "he was dead" ?

Deadrat · Answer

"He was dead" is a grammatically correct sentence, but it would useful only in discussing reincarnation or reanimation.

Chopsticks1942 · Answer

Thank you for your explanation. <img class='emoticon' style='Width:19px;Height:19px;' data-delaysrc='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' src='https://uat-englishforward-forums-backend.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/Emoticons/1.gif' alt='Emotion: smile'/>

Deadrat · Answer

I'm afraid I shortchanged you with my explanation. Sorry about that. Let me try again. You have a story about Aladdin. Being the kind of story that it is, it's set in the past, so you properly said "Aladdin ran," past tense. But you're also reporting a conversation that Aladdin had with his mother in the story. This is indicated by the quotation marks of direct speech. When you report direct speech in English, the tense shifts to the time of the conversation even though the conversation itself has already happened.

So Aladdin says (at the time he spoke): "I have an uncle." He couldn't mean anything else other than right now at the time of the conversation. The conversation must continue in parallel. Aladdin is talking in the present, so his mother must answer him in a tense that makes sense.

So (expanding a bit) Aladdin's mother says, "Right now at the time we're speaking, you do not have an uncle because right now he is dead."

And it being the nature of death, everybody understands that he's been dead since he was killed. She wouldn't say "he was dead," because that's a statement about the simple past form the point of view of the conversation, leaving open the possibility, grammatically speaking, that the uncle is alive at the time of the conversation. Thus my comment about reanimation.

Notice that the past tense may be used in the conversation if the discussion was about the past. In fact, Aladdin's mother comments, "You had an uncle." Past tense, some time ago from the point of view of the conversation. This could continue:

Aladdin: What happened?
(Aladdin asks about the time past from the conversation.)

Mother: There was a gunfight, and when the smoke cleared, your uncle was dead.
(Mother responds in kind about the past.)

She's talking about a fact from the past from the perspective of the conversation, so she uses the past tense in the conversation to talk about that fact

I hope that makes sense. If not, blame it on the explanation and if you like, ask what's not clear, and I'll give it another try.

Chopsticks1942 · Answer

Hi deadrat, thank you for trying hard to make me understand, I have learned a lot from you.
I will avoid to use "he was dead" in real life unless I want to emphasis something happened in the past.

"He is dead" or "He was dead"

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