21st Century Grammar Handbook

Q
Qualifier. See modifier, adjective, and adverb.
Question. Sentences or sentence fragments can ask questions either directly or indirectly. Punctuation and order of words vary, depending on the type of question.
D
IRECT
Q
UESTION
Sentences that are wholly devoted to questioning or asking something are called
“direct questions What is that Is it the thing you said you would bring Is it as heavy as it looked when we rst considered buying it and bringing it here?”
“Expensive?” Each of these questions is a direct question, even the last sentence
fragment and the longer sentences that convey information as well as asking for more. The writer has indicated the directness of the questions in several ways typical of such sentences.
First, like all direct questions, the example sentences end in question marks (Second, like many direct questions, some of these sentences invert word order.
Commonly the inversion puts an auxiliary verb at the beginning of the sentence (“is”
“do,” and the like) and follows it with a pronoun of some sort (“it” in the examples,
though many others are used. The next word is often a noun, which can be seen as a shifted subject or a subject complement more or less normally placed. Other words that frequently start such sentences are interrogative pronouns (what which and
“who”), as in the first example sentence.
Word order can be more elaborately changed, and other words can start questions
(“how,” why and soon. But the main features are clear inversion, questioning word to start, and question mark to end. As with all inversions, those used for questions should be checked carefully to ensure agreement among all grammatical elements—movement of elements for question order can put subjects far from verbs,
objects, or subject complements. Make sure all is in order.
The most common agreement errors occur with the interrogative pronoun “who”
as the rst word in a question Should it be who (nominative case) or “whom”
(objective case) when it hangs out thereat the start How can one tell The simplest test of case in such sentences is to answer the question with a pronoun that changes form in its objective case Who is to be asked She is to be asked Her is obviously wrong here since it is not an object but the subject of a passive

construction. Whom did you see I saw him Clearly you see something or someone in an active sentence as its object, and therefore the objective whom is correct.
Besides their obvious function of asking for information, questions can play an emphasizing role by varying sentence structure and thus calling attention to something. In this function questions are often used rhetorically, to make a statement rather than request enlightenment Is our cause not just The writer has no desire to hear a response to this question Rhetorical questions thus often lead
paragraphs or longer portions of a document in order to establish a topic or idea in an emphatic way “Isn’t it curious how the caterpillar lives Again, no answer is expected, but our attention is focused on caterpillars and their evidently unusual patterns of life. See emphasis.
The device of rhetorical questioning to open a statement, paragraph, or whatever is somewhat clichéd—a bit tired and overused. Thus its emphatic force has been lost to some degree, and it is often seen as an obvious, mechanical, or awkward way to launch a subject. Certainly rhetorical questions, like all emphatic devices, should not be repeated frequently in the same document, paragraph, or statement. Remember that the question you did not intend anyone to answer might be responded to “No,
caterpillars aren’t curious in the least The reader or listener has now been lost. See
cliché.

Download 1.09 Mb.

Share with your friends: