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information. They belong to the sphere of conversation and only occasionally occur in monological speech.
All varieties of questions may be structurally reduced to two main types, general questions (also called
“yes-no” questions) and pronominal questions (otherwise called “special” or “wh” - questions). Both are
graphically identified by a question mark. The two main types have a number of structural and communicative
modifications.
General questions
§ 9. In general questions the speaker is interested to know whether some event or phenomenon
asked about exists or does not exist; accordingly the answer may be positive or negative, thus containing or
implying “yes” or “no”.
A general question opens with a verb operator, that is, an auxiliary, modal, or link verb followed by the
subject. Such questions are characterized by the rising tone.
Does your sister go figure-skating?
Is that girl a friend of yours?
Can you speak French?
“Yes-no” questions may be incomplete and reduced to two words only: Can you? Does he?
A negative "yes-no" question usually adds some emotional colouring of surprise or disappointment.
Haven’t you posted the letter yet? (Why?)
General questions opening with will/would may be considered as commands and requests according to their
communicative role (see § 17).
Owing to their occasional emotional colouring, “yes-no” questions may function as exclamations (see § 22).
Tag questions
§ 10. A tag question is a short “yes-no” question added to a statement. It consists only of an operator
prompted by the predicate verb of the statement and a pronoun prompted by the subject. Generally the tag has a
rising tone.
You know French, don’t you? - Yes, a bit.
George is a football fan, isn’t he? - He certainly is.
A tag question is added to a statement for confirmation and therefore is sometimes called aconfirmative
question. It corresponds to such Russian tag questions as He так ли? Не правда ли? Ведь так? The speaker
expects the listener to share his view of some situation rather than to give him some new information. The most
usual patterns of sentences with tag questions are as follows.
Positive statement - negative tag - positive answer
You knew that before, didn’t you? - Yes, I did.
Negative statement - positive tag - negative answer
You didn’t know that before, did you? - No, I didn’t.
The answer, however, may be unexpected, as in: You didn’t know that before, did you ? - But I did.
The falling tone of the tag is also possible. It makes the whole sentence sound like a statement. The speaker
actually knows the answer and can do without it.
There is one more sentence pattern with a tag question which is less frequently used.
Positive statement - positive tag
You knew about it before, did you?