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Dear Dr English,

I sometimes see sentences with question words such as "who", "where" without a question mark, as in

"She asked me who went to the fair" or

"He showed me where he spent his summer holiday".

Could you please explain why? Which sentence is correct?

He explained to us why the world is getting warmer.

He explained to us why is the world getting warmer.

You have to look at the subject and the verb of the sentence. In your example above, the subject is 'he' and the verb is 'explained'. Surely, you remember the word order in

a sentence, subject - verb - object.

Logically, what follows the verb then takes the place of the object; therefore, it is not a real question.

Clearly, your example is reported speech and that is where your confusion comes from. Originally, it probably was something like

            We: "Why is the world getting warmer?"

            He: "Actually, there are a number or reasons. Firstly..."

We did have a real question here, where the question word pushes the subject out of its customary place and it ends up behind the verb instead of before it. Please note, that the question word moves the actual subject of the sentence.

The moment you use indirect speech, the subject of your sentence changes. No longer is 'the world' your subject but 'he'.

'The world is getting warmer' is an action in progress. The use of the auxiliary here has nothing to do with it being a question or not, but with the use of the progressive/continuous tense. The same is true, of course, for the present and past perfect tenses; only that the auxiliary then would be have/has and had respectively.

            Driver: "Has the plane arrived?"

The driver asked if the plane had arrived.

A little more confusing is when the question word is the actual subject of the sentence.

            Teacher: "Who knows this book?"

The teacher asked who knew that book.

Here the question asks directly for the subject of the sentence, so the word order remains the same; there is no subject that changed place.

Let's look at the question words.

 how, what, when, where, which, who, whom, whose, why

Of these only 'what' and 'who' can replace the subject.

              Who wrote 'War and Peace'?

              What smells so bad?

The other question words work as explained above with 'why'.

But not only reported speech uses a question word before the subject.

            Can you tell me where the museum is?

            I wonder how he knew all the answers in the test.

            I guessed what he would choose.

You notice that 'what' can ask for an object as well as for a subject.

All you need to do is keep an eye out for the subject and you will know which structure to use.

By Dr English

drenglish_7@hotmail.com