What Is a Question Word?
A question word is a word that explains or expresses what it is you want to know when you ask something: whether your question refers to a person, a place, a thing, possession, quantity, manner…
In English, all question words contain the letters W and H -most of them start with wh. That is why we often call them “WH-words”.
Grammatically speaking, there are two main types of question words: some are pronouns, and some are adverbs (more accurately, ‘adverbials’, but whatever 😉 )
What Question Words Are There?
Who, what, and which (+noun) can be the Subject of a sentence. This is important for word order!
Extended WH-Elements
Not all question words are, well, single words: you can have long phrases that serve as question words.
We often use what or which in these cases.
Examples:
- What kind of car do you drive?
- Which of these notebooks is yours?
- By how many arc seconds do I have to tilt the telescope?
Especially which often goes with the indeterminate pronoun, one / ones.
Exercises for question making and question words are here.
