English Grammar Drills

Questions and Negatives 235
5. Why he had so much trouble?
6. How early we could finish here?
7. Where we sign up for the program?
8. Whose advice you are going to follow?
9. What song they were singing?
10. How many parts I should order now?
11. What subject you teach?
12. What the problem was with my phone?
13. How they will recognize you?
14. When they should take the test?
15. Why the government requires that form?
Up to this point we have ignored one type of information question: questions in which the
interrogative pronoun plays the role of subject. Here are some examples with who playing the role
of subject with all the different types of verbs:
Modal:
Helping verb:
Be as main verb:
No helping verb:
Who can take the dog for a walk?
Who will take care of the children?
Who is working on the Smith papers?
Who has had lunch already?
Who is the visitor?
Who was Alfred Smith?
Who reported the accident?
Who answered the phone?
As you can see, these information questions seem to break all the rules: there is no inversion of
subject and helping verb, and in the last pair of examples, do is not used when there is no helping
verb. Obviously, there is something special that happens when the interrogative pronoun plays
the role of subject.
Basically, the two rules do not apply when the interrogative pronoun is the subject. To see
why this is the case, let’s start with the following statement and try to apply the two rules:
Who should go next.