English Upper-Intermediate B2 Part 1

Today we continue discussing the question types in English. In this video lesson we’ll focus on the difference between object and subject questions.
Let’s take a look at a typical statement: Tom got a promotion. In this sentence the word in bold Tom is the subject (подлог). Got is the verb (сказуемо), and a promotion is the object (допълнение). Subject followed by Verb followed by Object is the usual word order for statements in English. Now, what kind of questions can we ask based on that sentence? Is he happy? When did he get promoted? Do the colleagues know? How did you find out? When should we celebrate?
You will recognize from our previous video lesson that these are wh-questions and yes/no questions. 

So, what is common here? 
These are all object questions – they don’t ask who the person who got promoted was. Instead, we want to know something else. Всички тези въпроси търсят друга информация, а не кой е бил повишен. Иначе казано, тези въпроси не са към подлога на съобщителното ни изречение – Том. Затова ги наричаме object questions – въпроси към допълнението.
When we make an object question, we know who/what we’re talking about, so the subject is included after the verb be or between the auxiliary and the main verb. You can see the verb be here italicised, and the main verbs underlined. The subjects of these questions are in bold. 
Ако разгледаме въпроса Do the colleagues know? (Колегите знаят ли?), не питаме кой знае за това. Ето защо подлогът, в случая колегите, е на познатата ни позиция между спомагателния do и главния глагол know.

And what happens if we want to ask a question directed at the subject? Taking the same example, Tom got promoted, we will ask Who got promoted?  We have focused on the subject here. Notice the word order. Our question looks a lot like the statement. The only difference is that we have replaced the subject, Tom, with a question word, Who. We don’t ask Who did get promoted? This is because subject questions have the statement word order.

Something to remember here: In Present Simple and Past Simple we don’t usually include the auxiliary verbs in positive sentences, so they’ll be absent in Subject questions, too.  That’s why our statement here is Tom got promoted, not Tom did get promoted. Similarly, we say I usually get up early, not I usually do get up early. 

Let’s look at more examples: What led to the promotion? Аgain, we don’t have did here, so lead is in the past form led. Which colleague will be next? Here if we replace Which colleague with Sally for example, we get a statement – Sally will be next. We can do the same with Who told you that? – Pete told me that.

When we make a subject question, the most popular question word is who. Of course, this is because the doer of an action is usually a person. Even if we expect that the subject we’re asking about might be more than one person, remember that who is singular, like he or she. So, make sure you mark your verbs for the third person singular in present tenses. As you can see, in Who organizes the events we have added the -s ending for the Present Simple. Also, we don’t have the auxiliary do or does.

If we use the Present Continuous, the question would be Who is organizing the events, even if the answer is Many people. So we use is, not are. And in Who has heard the news, the auxiliary for Present Perfect is in the singular has, not have.
If we don’t want to use Who, we can go with which + a noun. For example, Which colleague was the host? We have one colleague, so the verb is singular, was. However, we can also ask Which teams were present? Here the noun is plural, teams, so the verb is also plural – were.
And be careful, we can’t say Who colleague or Who teams. Don’t put a noun after who in these questions.

If the subject we’re asking about is not a person, we can use the question word What, like in What happened? or What makes you happy? Again, notice we don’t have the auxiliaries do/does or did, so the verbs are marked appropriately.
The word order changes we have in subject questions will be similar to indirect questions, which we’ll discuss in another lesson.