Question-word Subject

Question words

Questions about the subject

When we ask questions about the subject of a sentence, the word order in the question and the answer is the same:

Ben designed this house.     

Who designed this house?

X Who did build this house?/ Who built this house?

• We use what, who, which, whose and how many in-questions about the subject.

Questions about the object

Questions about the object need an auxiliary verb (do, have, is, etc.) before the subject:

Wren designed this cathedral.

What did Wren design?

• We use what, which, who, whose, when, where, how often, etc. in questions about the object.
X Which cathedral Wren built?  / Which cathedral did Wren build?

Here is a summary of question words with examples:

  

Question word	Example: subject question	Example: object question
Who	Who is teaching you?	Who do you know here? (Whom is very formal.)
What	What caused the problem?	What film did you see?
What kind of	What kind of people live here?	What kind of TV programmes do you watch?
Which	Which book sold most?	Which picture do you like?
Whose	Whose book won the prize?	Whose book did you borrow?
How many	How many pupils came to the lesson?	How many people did you see?
Why		Why did you get up so late?
When		When did you go to England?
How		How do I get to your house?
How far		How far is the college from here?
How long How often		How long does it take to get there? How often do you go swimming?

What or which?

We use what when the choice is open. We use which when there is a limited choice:

What colour do you like? (= open choice)

Which colour do you prefer, red or blue? (= limited choice)

What countries have you visited? (= open choice)

Which countries in South America have you visited? (= limited choice)

---