"Dick Veit, UNCW English Dept." wrote:

> For example, if I were to say today, "In 1990, I met the
> person who won the Nobel Prize twenty years ago," it means the person won
> the
> prize in 1979.  If I were to say "In 1990, I met the person who won the
> Nobel Prize twenty years previously," it means the person won the prize
> in
> 1970.

To make the latter sentence clearer, would it not be better to shift
tense in the relative clause?  "...who had won the Nobel Prize
twenty years previously."  Without the tense shift, I have a hard
time distinguishing the difference in meaning between the two
sentences.

Note, however, that the original sentence in Dawei's query does
not include an adverbial of time (like "In 1990") to give a frame of
reference by which to measure the time mentioned in the relative
clause, as your examples do.  In the original, without that additional
time adverbial, "ago" seems like the most natural choice.



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R. Michael Medley       VPH 211                Ph: (712) 737-7047
Assistant Professor     Northwestern College
Department of English   Orange City, IA  51041
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