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