Question forms

REFRESHING GRAMMAR COURSE (THEORY)

D Year

References:

Parrott, Martin (2002) [2000]: Grammar for English Language Teachers. Cambridge.

Swan, M. (2005): Practical English Usage: New International Student’s Edition. Oxford / New York.

I. WORD ORDER

· question forms

· fronting

· spotlighting

· pushing information back

· position of adverbials

· clefting

· pseudo-clefting

1. Key considerations

Learners who have problems with the basic patterns for ordering words and sentence constituents often want to develop a good command of these before they begin to try using most of the possible variants. However, if they are hearing and seeing natural English, they inevitably come across lots of examples which don't follow the 'basic' rules.

Constructing questions is the one 'variant' that we can't avoid here. Native speakers of English sometimes take for granted the way one constructs questions. In fact, this involves complicated changes to the order of words in clauses, and many learners develop a command of question forms only very slowly.

Learners who have a good level of English may vary the patterns and basic orders they use in order to achieve particular emphasis. This is particularly relevant to learners who need to write English.

2. What are the major variants?

Question forms

In many languages the distinction between questions and statements is made only through intonation in speaking and punctuation in writing. However, in English, we use grammar to make this distinction (and often we don't use any 'special' features of intonation at all).

We divide question forms into four kinds. Three of these depend on the type of verb phrase involved:

Type 1: Verb phrases comprising am, is, are, was or were as a complement verb.

We reverse the normal order of subject and verb:

Are you ill? Was anyone at home?

Type 2: Verb phrases which include one or more auxiliary verbs (including modal verbs).

We reverse the order of the subject and the (first) auxiliary verb:

Can Dad stay? Have you been drinking beer?

Type 3: Single-word verb phrases (simple present and past tense of all main verbs apart from be).

We introduce a 'dummy' auxiliary (do or did) to make the question:

Did you swim? Do you take sugar?

We can add question words such as why, how, where, when to the beginning of questions which belong to Types 1-3.

Type 1: Why are you ill?

Type 2: When should I phone you?

Type 3: Where did you swim?

Questions with who and what may require other changes.

Type 4:

We use Type 4 questions to get information about the subject (not, as in Types 2 and 3, the object) of a sentence. The question word itself is the subject of the question. Type 4 questions involve no change to the basic order of words in a statement.

Who killed Kennedy? What's happening?

Learners sometimes confuse Type 3 and Type 4 questions:

Who did Kennedy kill? and Who killed Kennedy?

'Fronting' information, pushing it back and putting it under the spotlight

The 'basic' order of sentence says the subject establishes what the clause is about, and the predicate (i.e. what follows the subject) then introduces the new or most important information.

On many occasions we don't want this kind of clause - we don't want to begin with the subject. In these cases there are various ways we can move other information to the beginning of the clause. We call this process of bringing information forward 'fronting'.

The first clause of the first sentence in the last paragraph begins with 'fronted' information - here an adverbial is put before the subject of the main clause in order to 'orientate' you to what follows:

(Fronted) adverbial	subject	verb phrase	direct object
On many occasions	we	don't actually want	this kind of clause

Fronting is a normal and frequently occurring feature of English. We usually front information for one of two (contrasting) reasons:

• because this (and not the subject) establishes common ground and orientates the listener or reader to what is coming in the rest of the clause;

• to give information extra prominence by placing it in an unexpected position (i.e. at the beginning instead of near the end of a clause).

(We look at fronting in more detail below)

As well as fronting information, we also do the opposite - we push information towards the end of clauses. We do this usually to make it easier to understand and process information which is long, dense or complicated, or which contains little or no familiar 'orientating information' (i.e.):

As well as bringing information forward and pushing it back, we can also put it under the spotlight by using specific grammatical focusing devices. In the following, the expressions immediately following was are 'spotlighted' in this way:

It was on Tuesday that we saw him. When we saw him was on Tuesday.

(We look at these 'spotlighting devices' in more detail below)

3. Fronting information

Adverbials

Adverbials generally come at the end of the clause.

That's an excellent idea on the whole!

In fact the position of adverbials is very flexible, and we often 'front' them. There is nothing very strange or unusual about the following:

On the whole that's an excellent idea!

All of a sudden she saw a movement in the shadows.

Changes to word order after 'negative' adverbials

Some adverbials (including single-word adverbs) can have a negative or limiting meaning.

negative adverbials:	limiting adverbials:
never; nowhere; nothing; not often; not for nothing; not once; no way; never once; on no account	hardly; seldom; rarely; hardly ever; scarcely ever; only now; only occasionally; only once; only rarely

When we front these, we change the order of the following subject and (auxiliary) verb exactly as we do in questions:

fronted adverbial	verb	subject	complement
In Britain alone	is	selective state education	reviled.

We make these changes to word order more systematically in writing than in speaking.

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