Word Order in Questions (so complicated)

Hi there.
Why do you say

What brings you here? in English instead of
What does bring you here?

How dare you? instead of
How do you dare?

How is that verbs are formed in English in the 1st place,
when to use the main verb without the verb to do (what brings you here?)
and when to use it with the verb to do (what do you do?)..

Why is that many times, in titles/headlines, indirect questions are used:
for example: Why mothers die!?Why everything went wrong!?

instead of Why do mothers die? Why did everything go wrong?

PS
Who do you think you are?

It's a bit awkward construction. Could someone analyze it of me please?
Who are you?
Do you think?
Is Who, do you think, are you? is possible?


Many thanks

>>Why is that many times, in titles/headlines, indirect questions are used:
for example: Why mothers die!?Why everything went wrong!?

instead of Why do mothers die? Why did everything go wrong? <<

For a start, the way you have written it with 'do/did' is the only correct way for a question. No native speaker would use the examples you gave without the 'do/did'. You have probably just seen non-native speakers writing like that. With 'why', you always need to use a form of 'do'. If not, then it is not a question, but simply a statement. 'Why mothers die'. This isn't a question. It is simply a statement, and you would expect to see a reason following from the same speaker/writer.

As for 'What brings you here', yes, this is indeed an oft overlooked complexity of English. It is almost like a case system, as it depends on whether the 'what' is the subject or the object. In your example it is the subject, so you don't use 'does'. You would use the auxilliary form of 'do', if 'what' was the object. For example, 'What did he bring to the party?'. The same applies with 'which' and 'who'. Let's look at an example with 'who', as in formal English this word also changes according to case.

'Who saw him?' (who is the subject)

'Whom did he see?' (whom is the object).

Do you see the difference?

As for 'How dare you', this is simply an exception to the rule, in that the verb 'to dare' sometimes functions like an auxilliary, similar to 'can', 'should', 'would' etc. It doesn't always though, as you would say 'Don't you dare' and not 'Dare you not'. But you could say either 'I daren't' or 'I don't dare'. It really is just a rare exception, in that it seems to be a bit messed up, but thankfully this kind of thing is extremely rare among English verbs. Almost all verbs, which aren't auxilliary verbs follow the regular pattern.

>>It's a bit awkward construction. Could someone analyze it of me please?
Who are you?
Do you think?
Is Who, do you think, are you? is possible?<<

OK, this is slightly different I think. It should be:

'Who do you think you are?' Strictly speaking 'who' is still the subject here, I think, because the verb 'to be' takes the nominative. It should really be 'I think I am he' and not 'I think I am him', but we would say the latter in English anyway. Also, I think the addition of 'do' here is dependant upon the addition of another pronoun, even if the whole sentence should only really be in the nominative. Who think you you are would sound very wrong. So yes, because there is another subject mentioned here, even if strictly speaking, it is all nominative, you need the 'do'. But actually this is still a real exception, and I'm not even sure if what I'm saying is correct. Should it be 'Who do you think you are?' or 'Whom do you think you are?'. I need some grammar expert to help me out here...!

And I'm a native speaker...eek lol

Now I really want to know:

'Who do you think you are?'

or

'Whom do you think you are?'

Which is actually correct?

<<Hi there.
Why do you say

What brings you here? in English instead of
What does bring you here?>>

Technically you CAN say "What does bring you here?", but in that kind of sentence, the "does" is stressed, and is used for added emphasis. You wouldn't use it all the time.

??? is right, whether you use do or not depends on what's the subject and what's the object. In "what brings you here", the unknown "what" is the subject, and "you" is the object.

If "you" were the subject instead, you would indeed use a "do" construction, as in "What did you bring to the party?"

I don't know what your native language is, but if it's Spanish (just guessing by your name), some of the confusion might be in that English uses the word "you" as both the subject and object, while Spanish neatly distinguishes them into "tu" and "ti" or "te". You use the "does" when you mean the "tu" version of you. You don't use "does" when you mean the "te" or "ti" version.

There are a whole bunch of questions in this same pattern -- "What makes you think that?" "Who runs this business?" "Who knows the answer?" "Who feels sad about this?" in which the "question word" (who, what) functions as the subject, and the noun at the end of the sentence is only the object.

In other questions like "What does this animal eat?" or "Why do you like chocolate so much?", the animal and you are the subjects, not the objects, so the "do" or "does" construction is used.

Note how this would change if you asked "What eats this animal?" -- now the animal is the object, and something else is its predator! Perhaps the fact the English uses mainly word order to determine what's doing what to whom is the key to why we need "do" to differentiate who the verb refers to.

You're right Uriel, the emphatic use of 'do/does/did' didn't even occur to me, although I would of course use it without thinking. Wow, that makes it even more complex. To be honest, it is this kind of thing that makes me think English is far harder than it appears on the surface.

I'm not sure word order is the reason though. Even without any kind of 'do' construction, it would still be clear, wouldn't it?

'What the animal ate?'

or

'What ate the animal?'

Well, I think we could get by with that, although the addition of the 'do' auxilliary definitely adds clarity.

I guess a learner has to realise, that if they say in a simple sentence, for example, just enquiring about why you go somewhere,

'What does bring you here?', it will sound wrong and stilted,

but if they use it in an emphatic question, for example, if you had spoken about how you keep on coming to some bar, even though you don't like it much, and then they asked

'Well, what DOES actually bring you here?'

then it would be right.

Well, I'm no expert either, but halfway through that answer I got to thinking. A lot of languages get around this problem by having inflectional endings on their verbs and things like a (to) to indicate who is doing what to whom, and so they actually get to have more variation in word order than we do. English has a few inflections left, but not many, so we really have to rely a lot more on word order to indicate who's doing what. And I'm sort of trying to help Nestor, but sort of trying to figure it out myself, too!

I was thinking along these lines for Nestor's sake: what are you substituting in the statement when you turn it around into a sentence, and does that indicate whether or not you use a "do"?

It occurred to me that in the following progression:

The animal eats ____?

The animal eats what?

What does the animal eat?

using "does" sort of preserves the original sentence order, wherein you can tell that it's the animal doing the eating because "animal" comes right before "eat".

Turn that around, to

_____ eats this animal.

What eats this animal?

and now it's the animal being eaten by something unknown. And lo and behold, we know that because the word order between (___ or what), eats, and animal remain the same.

So this might be a way that Nestor could remember which way to construct his questions in different situations. (He will have to tell us if this helps him any!)

It also occurred to me that "What eats this animal?", if you were to assume the animal was still the eater, sounds a lot like old English -- "What says the king to this?" We don't use this sentence construction any more -- we would now tend to say "What does the king say to this?" -- but I was trying to figure out how we got from that type of grammar to our modern version.

I've noticed in Spanish that when you translate word for word and preserve Spanish word order in English, it sounds a lot like you're talking Renaissance Faire-style. And that has sort of helped me get the hang of how to put some of the more complicated sentences together in Spanish, when trying to translate word for word from English just ain't workin', 'cause the verb patterns don't seem to allow it. Just put on a faux-medieval pattern, and suddenly things fall into place a little better.


As for:

Now I really want to know:

'Who do you think you are?'

or

'Whom do you think you are?'

Which is actually correct?

it's easy to remember when to use whom -- only in the company of an associated preposition -- to whom, for whom, from whom, in whom, around whom, etc. So it is correct to say "Who do you think you are", because there's no preposition involved.

You think you are _____.

You think you are who?

Who do you think you are?

I don't think that's correct about 'whom'. It doesn't always have to be preceded by a preposition. I think your understanding of grammar is pretty correct in general, but that is definitely incorrect about 'whom'. You only think that, because of contemporary usage, especially AmE (I'm a speaker of BrE), where it tends to be retained with constructions like 'With whom' and 'To whom'.

In fact, it should simply be used with anything other than the nominative.

So:

'Whom do you like best'

'Whom did that involve?'

'Whom are you talking about?' (Or even more formally 'About whom are you talking)

All these are correct and there's no preposition involved. 'Whom' is simply the equivalent of 'him', 'her', 'us', 'me'. It is the remnant in English of an objective form in a case system, and no preposition is required before it. It's only really the equivalent of saying:

'He likes me'

You wouldn't particularly expect any preposition before 'me', and likewise 'whom' doesn't necessarily need one either.

Really? I would not personally normally use whom in these sentences:

'Whom do you like best'

'Whom did that involve?'

'Whom are you talking about?'

Although I would use it in the "about whom" example. I do see what you're saying about it being used wherever "him" is used, because I was thinking that earlier before I decided that I couldn't think of any good examples that didn't also involve a preposition. But maybe that's just a difference in usage between our dialects -- whom is used a lot less in the US, aor often used very inconsistently. And when a word causes more confusion than it solves, i think it's probably on its way out.

This website had a quick set of rules for deciding which to use that backs up your post (and I thought Rule #3 was pretty funny):
http://web.ku.edu/~edit/whom.html

Rule #1: Substitute “he/him” or “she/her”: If it's either “he” or “she,” then it's “who;” if it's “him” or “her,” then it's “whom.”

Rule #2: Every verb with a tense in a sentence must have a subject. And that word is always in the nominative case, so it's “who.” For example: In this sentence, “I decided to vote for whoever called me first”:
• “I” is the subject of “decided”
• “he” (whoever) is the subject of the verb “called.”

In the sentence, “Give it to whoever deserves it”:([You] give it to whoever deserves it.)
• “he” (whoever) is the subject of the verb “deserves.”
This rule supersedes the first rule as it relates to “who” and “whom.”

Note: Related to this rule is one that says: The subject of a phrase is always attached to that phrase — no matter what. For example:
Ask whoever reads that book to answer the question.

If you remember these two rules — substitute “he/him” or “she/her,” and that every verb with a tense must have a subject — you should solve the “who/whom” quandary every time.

If you apply those two rules and you're still not sure, apply the all-important Rule #3.

Rule #3: Give it a sincere and honest effort to determine if it's “who” or “whom.” If it takes more than a 30 seconds to figure it out, pick the one that sounds best to the ear (read it aloud) and move on. Why? Because even grammarians are likely to squabble over which to use. But always — always — apply rules #1 and #2 before using Rule #3.

<<Why do you say

What brings you here? in English instead of
What does bring you here?>>
Others have answered that question, but in case their answer is confusing, there's a simple way to see if the question needs "does". You can change the word order only with auxiliary verbs. So if the word order has changed, and you don't have an auxiliary verb, then you have to add "do" so that the question will have an auxiliary verb. So, for instance, in this case, the person would answer "[Something] brought me here". Same word order as in the question. Compare that to "What did you bring?" Here, the answer would be "I brought [something]." Since the question moved the [something] from the end to the beginning, you need "did".

Note that if you are simply asking whether something is true, the subject comes after the verb, which is not the normal word order. Thus, you need an auxiliary verb, and if you don't have one, you need to add "do".

"He brought oranges" -> "Brought he oranges?" -> "Did he bring oranges?"

<<Why is that many times, in titles/headlines, indirect questions are used:
for example: Why mothers die>>
I think that you're being confused by the fact that English uses the same words for both interrogative and place-holder pronouns. In this case, "why" is not an interrogative pronoun, but a place-holder. The headline presents the subject of the article. The subject of the article is why mothers die. Instead of saying "This article is about why mothers die", the newspaper will simply put "Why mothers die".

??? wrote:

<<Almost all verbs, which aren't auxilliary verbs follow the regular pattern.>>
That should be "Almost all verbs that aren't auxilliary verbs follow the regular pattern."

<<Strictly speaking 'who' is still the subject here, I think, because the verb 'to be' takes the nominative. It should really be 'I think I am he' and not 'I think I am him', but we would say the latter in English anyway.>>
This is an odd statement. You agree that we say "I think I am him", yet you claim that "to be" takes the nominative. Isn't what you mean "I would like 'to be' to take the nominative"? Obviously, it does not in fact take the nominative.

<< Also, I think the addition of 'do' here is dependant upon the addition of another pronoun, even if the whole sentence should only really be in the nominative. Who think you you are would sound very wrong. >>
No, the additional pronoun is not the issue, it's the changed word order. In a declarative sentence, the verb "think" would come before its object. Since the object ("who") of "think" is preceding it, we need "do".

Uriel wrote:
<<it's easy to remember when to use whom -- only in the company of an associated preposition -- to whom, for whom, from whom, in whom, around whom, etc. So it is correct to say "Who do you think you are", because there's no preposition involved. >>
The who/whom distinction depends on whether it is subject or object, not whether it is direct object (no preposition) or indirect object (preposition). Since there's no such thing as an indirect subject, prepositions are a clue that it's "whom", and that's often what people associate with "whom", but that's not the rule. The proper wording is "Whom did you see?", not "Who did you see?" Interestingly, because of this association with prepositions, and the fact that maintaining the distinction and not ending sentences with prepositions are both parts of formal speech, the two rules are often followed or ignored in tandem. So,
"Who are you sending it to?" / "To whom are you sending it?" --common
"Whom are you sending it to?" / "To who are you sending it?" -- not as common

I guess this is probabaly confusing the original poster lol

Yeah, he's probably sorry he asked!