Questions tagged [wh-questions]
The wh-questions tag has no usage guidance.
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Is there an etymological reason some "question words" mirror the spelling of "answer words" (When/then, where/there, ...)?
There are a few "question words" that mirror their answer words-
When/Then
Where/There
What/That
Who/Thou (might be stretching it here..)
Do these words have origins where this makes sense,...
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The Syntax of Question words coming in the middle of an interrogative sentence [duplicate]
Which one is correct?
Does anybody know how can I create an account?
Vs
Does anybody know how I can create an account?
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What are the rules for ending a sentence with a verb? [duplicate]
When do you end the sentence using the verb ‘to be’ ? Can someone tell me the difference between these three sentences.
What do you think ARE some barriers to getting legal support?
What do you think ...
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What determines what can be pied-piped and what not in wh-movement?
A wh-expression without wh-movement, where the wh-word is the object of the preposition “about”:
You are talking about what?
A sentence that has undergone wh-movement:
What are you talking about?
⸺...
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“By whom” vs. “By who” with passive modal for forming questions
Consider this sentence:
Children should be taught appropriate behavior by their parents.
If We want to question the actual doer of the action (their parents), are these correct?
By whom should ...
user147384
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Why isn't the word "Which" one of the 5 Wh-question words?
Wikipedia has a nice history article on the 5 question words beginning with "Wh" namely,
Who, What, Where, When, and Why
But nothing on the word "Which." Could this be just ...
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Compound interrogative pronouns
I'm confused what compound interrogative pronoun are used for? And what meaning does it give to a sentence? For ex
Whoever told you so?
Which also means who told you so? But what meaning does a ...
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Can he be an object pronoun?
I understand that a sentence can have more than one subject, but I don't understand the grammatical role of he in the question below and which verb he is performing if he is also a subject.
Who is ...
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Who vs. whom when the he/him test is unclear
I'm not sure whether the following sentence requires who/whom:
Does anyone know who/whom I can speak with about that?
If a similar sentence began with who/whom, it would be "whom." Whom can I speak ...
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We have "Here" and "There", why not "Hen" and "Then"?
There’s an easy morphological connection between question nouns (What, When, Where) and the “nonlocal” answer (That, Then, There), but the “local” answers vary more substantially (This, Now, Here). ...
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Diagramming simple wh- "to be" sentences
I have read a syntax book cover to cover and it seems to stubbornly avoid diagramming sentences with "to be" (or other auxilliary verbs) functioning as the principal verb. For example:
That dog is ...
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"When did you go there?" vs "When you went there?" [closed]
Could someone help me to understand the difference between these two sentences.
When did you go there?
When you went there?
What is the correct way of using these forms?
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Difference between "where is he from" and "where he is from" [closed]
what will be the question of he is from the USA? Is it "where he is from?"/"where is he from?". And why is it so?
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Where does the verb go on this question? Is it even a reported question?
I understand that when I report a question, I put the subject back in front of the verb, as in: "He asked if she was going to be late."
But I always get puzzled when it comes to reporting a question ...
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"What's" in indirect questions
Lets consider the following:
The book doesn't explain, "What's the wisdom behind education?"
Changing this to an indirect question becomes the following:
The book doesn't explain what the ...
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Position of verb for object clause
Is the general word order of this sentence correct?
We investigate how strong the effect of X on Y is.
Or, as an alternative,
We investigate how strong the effect of X is on Y.
In a preprint ...
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"Why can't I see?" or "Why I can't see?"?
Which of the following is correct?
Why can't I see?
Why I can't see?
I am a bit confused, since both have inversion, negation and a "why" in the beginning.
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Why do we put the verb to be at the end of these questions? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Changing subject and verb positions in statements and questions
Look at the following questions - can anyone give a simple grammatical explanation as to why we put the verb to ...
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Syntactic problem with Wh-questions: grammaticality
I strongly need someone's help to solve this problem of grammaticality:
I have to say why these examples are ungrammatical.
Which book did you make the suggestion that the children should read?
...
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Is the word order correct in "I'm not sure what is the right way" or is it only correct to say "I'm not sure what the right way is"?
I believe "I'm not sure what the right way is" is grammatically correct.
Recently I've seen too many people writing it this way:
I'm not sure what is the right way.
Is it grammatically ...
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Wh-questions: auxiliary verbs or not?
What's the difference between these two questions:
Why they chose football?
and
Why did they choose football?
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