<p>I am just wondering if this is a correct sentence.
After the team of soldiers assassinated the president, their radio signals had died.
I am wondering if their is correct because the word signals doesn't make sense with team.</p>
<p>but it does make sense with "soldiers". right?</p>
<p>Yea but this wasn't from any grammar book. I just made it up... so does anyone else know?</p>
<p>It's not correct. The helping verb "had" in your second clause indicates past perfect tense. Basically, the past perfect tense is used to indicate a distant past action/event that occurred before a not-so-distant past action/event. "Had" indicates the event farther in the past. So, your sentence would be OK if it read: "After the team of soldiers had assassinated the president, their radio signals died." Note that the distant past action is "assassinated", while "died out" came later.</p>
<p>Hope that helps.</p>
<p>After the soldiers ... their radio signals died.
After the team of soldiers... the soldiers' radio signals died.
After the team of soldiers... its radio signal died.</p>
<p>In your original, soldiers is not really a noun (part of a prep phrase maybe?) so you can't use replace it (the word "soldiers") with a pronoun ("their"). I'm not a writing expert but I know what sounds like crap.</p>
<p>Ok ok but what about the "Their radio signals" part. I agree w/ you about had.</p>
<p>Shouldnt "their" be "its" because it refers to a team of soldiers?</p>
<p>Yep, flyguy's right, it should be "its"...I didn't even catch that. I must be slipping.</p>
<p>Its all good PeteSAT. It happens to the best of us.</p>
<p>So is the word signals also wrong? Because if you change it to ITS then .. it doesn't make sense.</p>
<p>"Its" doesnt have to be wrong. A basketball team can have players just like a team of soldiers can have signals.</p>
<p>Right. If the team of soldiers has just one signal, then it should be singular, but the team could have multiple signals, and so plural could be correct as well... "its" is still correct.</p>
<p>So what's the tense order?</p>
<p>Past perfect
Past...</p>
<p>Then what?</p>