English grammar drills part 33 pdf

Here are some more examples with the subject in italics and the verb in bold: Statement Inverted yes-no question They will be home late.. Up until the beginning of the eighteenth century

Exercise 13.1

Underline the verbs in the following questions and label each question as either yes-no or

information.

yes-no

Will you mail the letters at the post offi ce for me?

1 Can you determine the exact cost?

2 Whom did the police fi nally arrest for the crime?

3 How much can we afford?

4 Have they decided yet?

5 Was the ending of the movie really surprising?

6 Why should they want that?

7 Is the phone ringing?

8 Has it been raining all day?

9 Must they insure it for the full amount?

10 Will you be ready by six?

11 How much would it cost?

12 Will my using my cell phone disturb you?

13 Why should we care about it?

14 Has Lois approved it yet?

15 How often will we be meeting over the next couple of weeks?

Yes-no questions

There are two different ways that English forms yes-no questions: yes-no questions and tag

ques-tions Here is an example of each:

Yes-no question: Are you ready to go?

Tag question: You are ready to go, aren’t you?

Since tag questions always involve negatives, we will postpone dealing with them until the next section on negatives

The basic characteristic of yes-no questions is that the subject and verb are inverted In a

statement, the normal word order is subject  verb In yes-no questions, the subject and verb have

been inverted so that the word order is verb  subject

Here are some more examples with the subject in italics and the verb in bold:

Statement Inverted yes-no question

They will be home late Will they be home late?

You are leaving tonight Are you leaving tonight?

Only a handful of verbs can be used in forming inverted yes-no questions The vast majority

of verbs cannot be inverted For example:

John works in New York X Works John in New York?

He commutes from Princeton X Commutes he from Princeton?

His parents live in California X Live his parents in California?

(If you think these inverted questions have a vaguely Shakespearean or King James Bible ring to

them, you are absolutely correct Up until the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was

per-fectly grammatical to form yes-no questions by inverting the fi rst verb with the subject, no matter

what the fi rst verb was: helping verbs and main verbs alike both inverted with the subjects.)

There is no standard name in traditional grammar for the verbs in modern English that can

be inverted to form yes-no questions The verbs that can be inverted are made up of just the

fol-lowing three groups of verbs:

1 Modal auxiliary verbs: These include can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, and

would Here are some examples of questions formed with modal auxiliary verbs:

Note: In traditional grammar will is singled out from the other modal auxiliary verbs as part of

the future tense Actually, there is nothing special about will from a grammatical point of view—

2 Helping verbs: The helping verbs are be and have They help to form the progressive and

perfect tenses

Progressive: be (am, is, are, was, were)

Perfect: have (have, has, had)

Here are some examples of questions formed with helping verbs:

John was staying there Was John staying there?

They have been very busy Have they been very busy?

She had returned his e-mail Had she returned his e-mail?

3 Main verbs: In American English, the only main verb that can be used to form yes-no

questions is be (am, is, are, was, were) Here are some examples of questions formed with the

main verb be:

The kids are at school Are the kids at school?

Jane is an accountant Is Jane an accountant?

Note: In British English have used as a main verb can also be inverted to form yes-no questions

We will discuss the difference between the British and American use of have as a main verb later

in this chapter

Exercise 13.2

Turn the following statements into yes-no questions Underline the verb(s) in the question and

identify whether the fi rst verb is a modal auxiliary, helping verb, or main verb.

John has locked the gates

helping verb

Has John locked the gates?

1 We are ready to leave soon

2 You can translate that into Spanish.

3 The kids were very happy with their presents

4 I should decline a second helping of your terrifi c dessert

5 They will be able to fi nance it by themselves

6 The French fi lmmakers have infl uenced his movies a lot

7 Her criticism is of great concern to the board

8 I’m working on it

9 He should postpone his trip

10 They are just kidding

11 It has gone on too long

12 He could have done it differently

13 They are in big trouble about this

14 That will stain the carpet.

15 We are turning around at the next corner

To this point, we have formed yes-no questions from statements that contained verbs that can

be inverted: the nine modal auxiliary verbs, the two helping verbs (be and have) and the main

verb be (ignoring the British use of the main verb have for the moment).

What happens, however, when the statement does not contain any of these verbs? The answer

is unique to English: we insert into the sentence what amounts to a dummy auxiliary verb This

dummy verb takes away the tense marker from the main verb (just like any modal auxiliary or

helping verb) so that the main verb becomes an uninfl ected base form The dummy verb, in its

present or past tense form, is then inverted with the subject just like any other auxiliary verb

This dummy verb, is, of course, the verb do Here are some examples using this dummy auxiliary

verb

Let’s start with a simple sentence:

John smiled.

We cannot invert the verb smiled because it is neither an auxiliary verb nor a helping verb What

we do instead is insert the dummy auxiliary verb do in front of the main verb smiled We will call

this process the do insertion rule.

After do has been inserted just in front of the verb, we will automatically transfer the tense

marker from that verb to do (All we are really saying is that the fi rst verb must always carry the

present or past tense marker.) In our example, do picks up the past-tense marker from smiled so

that do becomes did and smiled, having lost its past-tense marker, reverts back to its base form

smile The do insertion rule has now produced this intermediate sentence:

John did smile.

This is a perfectly grammatical sentence It is a kind of emphatic version of the original sentence

It emphasizes that John really did smile, even though it is not something that we would normally

expect of John (This emphatic use of do as a kind of special-purpose auxiliary verb is the actual

historical source of the do used in yes-no questions and negatives in modern English.)

This intermediate sentence now contains an auxiliary verb that can be inverted in the

nor-mal way to produce an ordinary yes-no question:

John did smile ⇒ Did John smile?

Here are some more examples of changing statements to yes-no questions using the interme-diate step of forming an emphatic do statement:

Statement Emphatic do statement Yes-no question

The TV works The TV does work Does the TV work?

She got the answer She did get the answer Did she get the answer?

He returned it He did return it Did he return it?

Exercise 13.3

Turn the following statements into yes-no questions using the do insertion rule to form an

emphatic do statement.

He shut the window

Emphatic do statement Yes-no question

He did shut the window Did he shut the window?

1 He installed the program

2 Tom fell down

3 Ralph bought a camera

4 Ruth swims every day

5 The meeting lasted hours

6 They trust each other

7 The boss quit yesterday.

8 They tried really hard

9 The wind damaged it

10 Bob retires soon

11 She loaned him her car

12 He wrecked her car

13 She got really angry

14 He paid for the damages

15 She still talks to him

Exercise 13.4

Change the following sentences directly to their corresponding yes-no questions Notice that

some verbs will require do and some will not Underline all the verbs in both the statement and

the yes-no question.

The CEO has approved the deal Has the CEO approved the deal?

The CEO approved the deal Did the CEO approve the deal?

1 They guessed the right answer

2 You can combine the results