0
Fire1 Posted 7 years ago
Grammar

Is this sentence "If he were there yesterday, we could have found him" grammatically correct?

some native speakers told me the sentence is grammatically correct, but that doesn't seem grammatically correct to me.

I would correct it as "If he had been there yesterday, we could have found him".


Whose sentence is correct?

  

Top answer

fire1 If he had been there yesterday, we could have found him. Correct. fire1 If he were there yesterday, we could have found him.

— CalifJim

  • fire1 If he had been there yesterday, we could have found him.
  • Correct.
  • fire1 If he were there yesterday, we could have found him.
  • I'd accept this as correct, too.
  • We often substitute the past for the past perfect when the past perfect is not necessary to make the time relationships clear.
Free · every Monday

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

New words, one handy idiom, and a 2-minute quiz — delivered to your inbox to keep your streak alive.

2 Answers
0
fire1If he had been there yesterday, we could have found him.

Correct.

fire1If he were there yesterday, we could have found him.

I'd accept this as correct, too. We often substitute the past for the past perfect when the past perfect is not necessary to make the time relationships clear. We don't do this as often

0
0

As CJ suggests, we might say that the perfect is redundant here since the anterior (past) meaning is conveyed by "yesterday".

Your title example with "were" is grammatically OK, but you could instead use the simple preterite "was", though it presents his being there as a somewhat less remote possibility than irrealis "were" does.

You can also use "had been there" (though see above)

0

Related Questions