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Questions With What, Who and Whom Lingbase

This document provides a summary of how to use who, whom, and what in questions. It explains: 1) Who and what can be used as subjects or objects. Questions with who/what as the subject do not require an auxiliary verb, while questions with who/what as the object do require an auxiliary verb. 2) Who is used when asking about a person as the subject. Whom is used when asking about a person as the object, especially after a preposition. 3) Examples are given to illustrate questions with who/what as the subject and object, as well as questions using whom.

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YuTeang Leng
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30 views1 page

Questions With What, Who and Whom Lingbase

This document provides a summary of how to use who, whom, and what in questions. It explains: 1) Who and what can be used as subjects or objects. Questions with who/what as the subject do not require an auxiliary verb, while questions with who/what as the object do require an auxiliary verb. 2) Who is used when asking about a person as the subject. Whom is used when asking about a person as the object, especially after a preposition. 3) Examples are given to illustrate questions with who/what as the subject and object, as well as questions using whom.

Uploaded by

YuTeang Leng
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Main / Grammar /
What happened? Whom did you call? — Questions
with what, who and whom

Questions with what, who and


whom

The question word what and who can act both as a


subject or an object. Depending on that, the structure
of the sentence will be different.

Study these examples


What happened?

What did you see?

Who owns this company?

Who did Mike call?

Questions to the subject with what


and who
If "what" or "who" is the subject in the sentence, we
don't need an auxiliary verb. The main verb goes right
after the question word:

What/Who + main verb + ...?

Examples of what and who as a subject


What is her name? Her name is Christy.

What happened to Paul? He fell down the


ladder.
What is hanging on the wall? A painting is
hanging on the wall.
What makes you happy? Love makes me
happy.
Who is knocking at the door? A postman is
knocking at the door.
Who made this armchair? My grandfather
made it himself.
Who knows the answer? Jenny knows the
answer.

Questions to the object with what


and who
If what/who is the object in the sentence, we need an
auxiliary verb.

What/Whom + auxiliary verb + subject +


main verb + ...?

Examples of what and who as an object


What did you learn at the lesson? I learnt
some new grammar rules.
What does John want from me? He wants
some help.
What has the dog been doing? The dog has
been swimming in a mud puddle.
Who is Amanda calling now? She is calling
a friend of hers.
Who do we believe? We believe them.

Who did they sell their car to? They sold it


to the Fishers.

Who and whom


We use "what" both as a subject and an object to
make questions about things, abstract terms, but not
about people.

We use the question word "who" when we ask


questions about a person.

If the question word is a subject (= we can replace it


with a personal pronoun in its basic form: Who did it?
He did it. Who cares? She cares.), then we always say
"who".

But, if the question word is an object (= we can


replace it with a personal pronoun in the objective
case: Whom do you help? I help him.), we should say
"whom" according to the official grammar rules.
Especially, when the verb requires a preposition.
However, whom is rarely used in modern spoken
English, it sounds very formal.

Examples of whom with a preposition


Whom is he talking to? (=Who is he talking
to?)
Whom are we going to the theatre with? (=
Who are we going to the theatre with?)
Whom did you bake the cake for? (= Who
did you bake the cake for?)

If we sum up the above written, we'll get a following


table:

question to subject question to object

what/who + main verb + ...? what/who + aux. verb +

What makes you happy? What did you make at th


Who has just called? Who have you just calle

also possible whom


Whom are you going ou
Whom did they offer the

DO EXERCISES

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