Types of questions

General questions or Yes/no questions have following structure: aux.v./modals + subject +

main v. + o.m.s? Is she a scientist? – Yes, she is. (Positive incomplete answer) She is a scientist. (Positive
complete answer) Does she work hard? – No, she doesn’t. (Negative incomplete answer) She doesn’t
work hard. (Negative complete answer) She is very lazy. (exhaustive/full answer). We use short answers
to avoid repetition of the question asked before. General negative qs. have the same structure as positive
but we add particle not. There is a difference between full and short form. Full form: Did I not tell you not
to talk to strangers? Here particle not is after the subject. Short form: Didn’t I tell you not to talk to
strangers? Here particle not is after the first aux.v.
Special qs. or Wh- qs. have the same structure as general qs., but on the first place before aux.v.
we put special qs. words (What, When, How) or structures (How many, How much). How many people
are there in the picture? Where are they? Special negative qs. have the same structure as general negative
qs., but we put special qs. words/structures on the first place before aux.v. The place of particle not is
after subject if it’s for the full form and after the first aux.v. if it’s for the short form.
Subject qs. are qs. we ask when we want to know the subject of the sentence. These qs. usually
begin with the words Who, Whose, What or Which. After that comes aux.v., main v. and o.m.s. These qs.
are not full because there is no subject in their structure. Who called Peter? In Present and Past Simple we
don’t use aux.vs. do/does/did because positive sentences in such tenses don’t have them and also they
don’t have subject. Who told you the news? If we look on such a qs., we will see that they will look like
simple positive sentence if we substitute a word Who with the subject.
Alternative general qs. basically consist of 2 general questions which are connected with a
particle or (Do you speak English or Spanish?) And if main members of these sentences are similar, then
we don’t repeat them to avoid tautology. But when at least one of them is different then we have to use
both of them: Do you read English or do you speak English? Alternative special qs. consist of special qs.
and alternative part: What language do you speak, English or Spanish?
Disjunctive qs/Tag qs. are qs. which consist of 2 parts: positive and negative. When the main
sentence is positive, then the qs. tag is a short form of general negative q. and it consists of aux.v. and the
subject. It is a gorilla, isn’t it? And when the main sentence is negative, then the qs. tag is a short form of
general positive q. and it consists of aux.v., particle not and subject. It isn’t a gorilla, is it? When the
sentence contains a word with a negative meaning like never, hardly, seldom, little or rarely, the q. tag is
positive: She never goes anywhere alone, does she? Some verbs/ expressions form q. tags differently: I
am – aren’t I? Imperative – will/won’t you? Don’t – will you? Let’s – shall we? I have got – haven’t I? I
have – don’t I? There is/are – isn’t/aren’t there? This/that is – isn’t it? These/Those are – aren’t they?
Everyone/Someone/Anyone/No one – they?