Question forms & subject/object questions
Questions without an auxilary
When the question word ( who? what? which? How many? ) is the SUBJECT of the verb in the question, we DON'T use an auxilary ( do,does,did). The verb is in the third person.a
Who writes their songs?a
Yes/No questions
- Is he a teacher? Yes he is.a
- Can you swim? No, I can’t.a
- Have they got a car? Yes they have.a
To form yes/no questions where there is an auxiliary verb or a modal verb, we invert the word order of a positive sentence. (He is a teacher > Is he a teacher?)a
- Do you eat fish? No I don’t.a
- Does she know you. Yes she does.a
When there is no auxiliary verb we use ‘do’ to form the question.a
With question words
The same rules apply when there is a question word (‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘why’, ‘who’, ‘which’, ‘how’, ‘how much’, ‘how many’)a
- Where is the hotel?a
- What can you smell?a
- Who has just arrived?a
Where there is an auxiliary or modal verb, that verb is used to form the question.a
- How did you get here?a
- When do your parents get back?a
- How much does it cost?a
Where there is no auxiliary verb, we use do.a
Subject/Object questions
Sometimes you might see questions like this.a
- Who broke the window?a
- What happened next?a
- Who told you that?a
There is no auxiliary verb and the word order is not inverted.a
These are called subject questions – because the question word is the subject of the sentence.a
Look at these two questions.a
- Who does Romeo love? Romeo loves Juliet.a
- Who loves Romeo? Juliet loves Romeo.a
In the first question, Romeo is the subject of the verb.a
In the second question ‘who’ is the subject and Romeo is the object.a