Indirect questions

There are two major types of questions: general questions (Does John go to school?) and special questions (What did John do yesterday?).

General questions have no question words, are characterised by inversion and invite yes or no as an answer. When they are turned into indirect speech, the interrogative form of a verb is changed to the affirmative form, i.e. inversion is replaced by normal word order, and the conjunction if/whether/whether or not is used to introduce a subordinate clause.

John said/asked, “Did you go to the concert last week?” → John asked Peter if/whether the latter had gone to the concert the previous week.

John said/asked, “Do you want to apply for the job or not?” → John asked him if/whether he wanted to apply for the job or not. | John asked him whether or not he wanted to apply for the job.

If is more usual than whether. Whether or not is more emphatic than if or whether; it implies that an answer is being demanded.

In the majority of cases if and whether are interchangeable. There are, however, several types of context in which only whether is obligatory or advisable.

1. Whether is obligatory when the subordinate clause it introduces is the object of a prepositional verb.

John talked about whether it was wise to send children to study away from home.

2. Whether is also obligatory if it introduces an infinitive.

John wondered whether to go to college or to university.

3. Whether is recommended if the indirect question contains a conditional clause. In this case the repetition of if is avoided.

John asked whether Peter would be late for work if he had a helicopter.

Special questions begin with a question word: how, what, when, where, which, who, whom, whose, why. We must distinguish between two kinds of special question.

1. The special question of the first kind has the subject as its target. In this case there is no inversion of the subject and the auxiliary verb. Thus this kind of special question has the same word order as the statement, the only difference between them being the use of a question word at the beginning of the question.

Statement: John broke the window.

Question: Who broke the window?

When converting a question of this type into indirect speech, we retain the original (i.e. normal) word order. The resultant reported question has two parts: the main clause with a reporting verb in it and the subordinate clause representing the question proper.

Who broke the window? → John asked who had broken the window.

What caused the accident? → John inquired what had caused the accident.

2. The special question of the second kind has as its target any other sentence element except the subject. In this case the normal word order is inverted and a question word is placed at the beginning of the sentence.

Statement: John saw Peter yesterday.

Question: When did John see Peter?

To put this type of special question into indirect speech, we must change the inverted word order to the normal, retain the original question word and add a clause containing a reporting verb.

When did John see Peter? → Mary asked when John had seen Peter.

There is, however, one exception to the above rule. If the target of the question is a subject complement, the normal word order in indirect speech is not always observed.

• The inverted word order is practically always retained in indirect speech if the question contains a fixed phrase.

What’s the time? → John asked what was the time.

What’s the matter? → John inquired what was the matter.

• The inverted word order is preferred in indirect speech if the subject is somewhat complex.

What’s the name of the man sitting in the chair by the window? → John asked what was the name of the man sitting in the chair by the window.

• There are speakers of English who indiscriminately use either normal or inverted word order in this case.

Who is the man? → John asked who the man was. | John asked who was the man.

There is also a kind of indirect question in which, instead of a subordinate clause, an infinitive construction is used.

John asked him what to do/where to go.

John wondered whether to leave.

In real life conversations there are plenty of elliptical questions and answers to them, i.e. sentences with some parts omitted. Ellipsis is generally used to avoid repetition. But when such fragments of conversation are reported, these parts are introduced to make the sentences in indirect speech structurally and semantically complete.

John: Ever been to China?

Peter: No, never. Had a chance, though. Can’t understand how I let it slip by.

John asked Peter if he had ever been to China. Peter replied that he had never been to that country, though once he had had a chance to visit it. He still couldn’t understand why he had missed it.