Subject and object questions

1. Subject and object questions

In English there are two different types of questions using question words:

2. Structure of object questions

The object questions are the most common questions in English. They are used to find out where, when, why... the subject performs a certain action, that is, we ask questions about the complements of a sentence.

These types of questions follow the structure below:

Let's imagine we have the following sentence:

We can ask two object questions:

The auxiliary verb depends on the verb tense used. In this case it's did because the verb in the sentence Jeremy bought a nice mug in Ireland is in the simple past tense.

3. Structure of subject questions

Subject questions are used to find out who or what performs the action, i.e. we ask questions about the subject of a sentence.

These types of questions follow the structure below:

We will take the same sentence as above as a reference:

In this case we can only ask one subject question:

If we wanted to use the usual structure (object question), we would see that it's not possible, as the answer would be in the question:

4. Comments on subject questions

• QWs usually used with subject questions are the following:
  

  Question word	Examples
  WHO?	Who answered the phone?
  WHAT?	What happended at the party?
  WHICH?1	Which car arrived first?
  WHOSE?1	Whose dog bit you?
  HOW MANY?1	How many people attended the concert?

  ¹With how many, whose and which, we can put a noun after the question word if necessary.

• Although in object questions we always need an auxiliary verb, in subject questions in present simple and past simple, the auxiliary verb (do / does / did) is omitted.
  
  Who goes to bed early?

  How many athletes took part in the race?

  When the verb tense needs an auxiliary or modal verb in all its forms, it will not be omitted.

  Who is eating an apple?

  Who should buy a new car?

Remember!