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Why do we say "Could you tell me where the bank is?", instead of "Could you tell me where is the bank?".

Or, "I wonder what time he left?", instead of "I wonder what time did he leave?"

I'm having trouble figuring out why these types of questions don't use the regular question word order!

Thanks in advance!

Alexanndra wrote:Why do we say "Could you tell me where the bank is?", instead of "Could you tell me where is the bank?".

Or, "I wonder what time he left?", instead of "I wonder what time did he leave?"

I'm having trouble figuring out why these types of questions don't use the regular question word order!

Thanks in advance!

I can tell you what I tell my students, which may or may not be the "real" explanation.

You can say, "I know where he went." It's not a question, so there is no question order. If you make a question, you say, "Do you know where he went?" The question part is "Do you know....?" The "...where he went..." is not the question.

Also, "I wonder...." has no question mark at the end. ( I wonder where he went.)

By the way, there are some native speakers who don't follow this rule. I don't know if in the future it will change, but I feel pretty confident it's still not considered "standard" (whatever that is) to put the two questions in.

These are examples of 'embedded questions'; a question is embedded in another question or statement. In these cases, the sentence structure changes.

Can you tell me + where is it = Can you tell me where it is?


We have to make English grammar ridiculously complex. We wouldn't want just anyone speaking the language now, would we?



my site: www.roadtogrammar.com

I'm having trouble figuring out why these types of questions don't use the regular question word order!

They do! Can you tell me... has the right word order, it's the bit that comes after that causes confusion.

Let's look at a simpler example, and then build up:

Can you tell me the time?
I don't know the time.

Where the bank is isn't a question, it's a piece of information, just like the time. Don't be thrown by the where.... Consider:

The time is irrelevant.
Where the bank is is irrevelant.

In both cases, the where... phrase is not interrogative 'cos it ain't a question. Students get thrown because when they see when, who, what they invert as a kneejerk reaction, without thinking about what the phrase actually means.

BTW Emile, that's a smart looking website you've got there Some of the quizzes look more like lexis than grammar, mind.

I think that Emile has got it.
But I want to give it a try, too!
Let me know if this makes sense, or not.

There is some serious movement going on here, and we see it with the embedded clauses. The info in question is changed to what, when, where, why, who or whatever is appropriate, then it is moved to the COMP position, and leaves its former position empty. And that's why we think it looks wierd, because normally there is supposed to be something there, but it moved.

Example:

The bank is on the corner.

Can you tell me that the bank is on the corner?

-But the speaker does not know that the bank is on the corner so they take that info, change it to where and move it to the COMP place, and leave an empty slot at the end.

Can you tell me where the bank is ________?

Can you tell me where the bank is?
I know where the bank is.
This map is useless. It doesn't show where the bank is

Transformational grammar notwithstanding, do you see any qualitative difference between where the bank is in the question as opposed to the statements?

Where the bank is is a clause, so there's no inversion.
Where is the bank? is a question so we need to invert.

Nice site emile. It works in explorer very well, trouble is, it doesn't work in firefox. I don't know if you knew that.

Works fine in Firefox; maybe you have javascript disabled.

Thank you, you guys are great!!!!!