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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。?
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grammar relative-clauses subordinate-clauses
Should the tense of predicate in main clause be the same as the tense of predicate in the relative clause?
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.
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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.
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