A young teacher taught ‘Question Tags’ to her students and she wanted to test whether the students had really learnt how to frame tag questions. She said, “Here are examples of tag questions.” A student interrupted the teacher and requested her to write the sentences on the board. Appreciating the student’s enthusiasm the teacher wrote these two examples on the board:
1) Kumar has three cars, hasn’t he?
2) Kumar’s parents have five houses, haven’t they?
Then she asked that student to give examples of tag questions. Pat came his reply:
1) Ramesh likes chocolates, likesn’t he?
2) Rupa loves Ramesh, lovesn’t she?”
It is not uncommon for learners of English to make such errors. Some aspects of ‘Question Tags’ are difficult for them to understand. Readers have sent in queries responding to last week’s column on different types of tags:
1. What should be the question tag if a sentence has these verbs HAVE or HAS?
In sentences having ‘have’ or ‘has’ as the main verb, the question tag with either ‘have’ or ‘do’ is possible. Some sentences:
• Your cousin has a house in Mumbai, hasn’t she?
• You have two dogs, haven’t you?
In the sentences above, “have”, which means “to own”, is used as a main verb and therefore question tags — hasn’t she? haven’t you? hasn’t she? — are used. Question tag with “do” is also correct. Therefore, the questions tags below are also possible:
• Your cousin has a house in Mumbai, doesn’t she?
• You have two dogs, don’t you?
In British English question tagswith “have” is preferred whereas in American English question tags with “do” is preferred.
2. If a sentence begins with ‘there+be’, then what should be the pronoun in the question tag?
The pronoun in the question tag should be “there” as in the examples below:
• There is an engineering college near your house, isn’t there?
• There aren’t any doctors in the hospital, are there?
• There won’t be any problem, will there?
3. Is it correct to use “can we?” in the question tag if a statement begins with “let us”?
If a sentence begins with the phrase “let us” or “let’s” then the question tag is “shall we?” and not “can we”. Here are examples:
• “Let’s just relax and enjoy the evening, shall we?” suggested her husband.
• Let’s go and play tennis, shall we?
4. What should be the pronoun in the question tag, when the statement has any of these pronouns as the subject: everyone, everybody, none, nobody, someone, somebody?
In sentences where any of these pronouns — everyone everybody, none, nobody, someone, somebody — is the subject, the pronoun in the question tag should be ‘they’ as in these examples:
• Everyone loves someone, don’t they?
• Someone sent an email enquiring about the conference, didn’t they?
• No one will watch the movie, will they?
rayanal@yahoo.co.uk
