She is or she was

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munchun2004

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Often from what we hear from other people,
a) She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.
b) She is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.
Could somebody tell me what is the difference between the above sentences. I often they are interchangeably used. For example, even the girl is still the most beautiful from all I girls I have seen, sometimes people still prefer sentence a instead of sentence b. Sometimes, things get even worse when they mix the tenses up and become
c) She was the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.
d) She is the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.
I often hear sentence c comes out from the native speaker mouth. Is sentence c correct? What about sentence d? Is sentence d correct?
 
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Casiopea

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North American English,

Past: a) She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. (OK)
Present: b) She is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. (OK)

Mix: c) She was the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. (Odd)
Mix: d) She is the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. (Odd)

If c) means, She was and still is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, then it's OK semantics-wise, but it's grammatically odd.

If d) means, She is and always was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, then it's OK semantics-wise, but it's grammatically odd.
 
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