Hello Professor. When do we say ‘who met you?’ and ‘who did you meet?’? (Marine, France).

Hello Marine and thanks for that very common question we get from students and I’ll try my best to answer it. Take a look at the following sentence. What is the subject and object of the sentence?

- I met Javier

Remember, every sentence has a subject and verb and some verbs have objects. The subject of the sentence is ‘I ‘and the object is ‘Javier’. So if we want to know who ’met’ Javier (who did the action), we ask the question ‘Who met Javier?’ The wh-question word is followed by the verb and then the object. This is called a subject question. Clearly the answer is ‘I met Javier’.

However, if we want to know about the object ‘Javier’, we ask the question using the auxiliary verb ‘do’ in this case ‘did’ followed by the subject ‘you’ and the infinitive form of the verb ‘meet’ at the end. So what’s the question? Yes…, ‘Who did you meet?’

Look at the next example:

- She ate the apple

Here the subject question is ‘Who ate the apple?’ and the object question is ‘What did she eat?’ Obviously the object is a thing, so we use a different wh-question word, in this case ‘what’. We can use other wh-words such as which, where, when, how many and even why. For example:

- I saw him because he came first.

If you want to why, you can ask the question, ‘Why did you see him?’

In short, never use the auxiliary verb ‘do’ with a subject question.

Exercise:
Make subject and object questions and other predicate questions using ‘do’ of the following sentences. Use appropriate question words (the first one has been done for you):

E.g. Who saw her friend? / Who did Marine see? / When did she see her friend?

1. Marine saw her friend yesterday.
2. I broke the window.
3. The man saw the murder.
4. I went home.
5. He didn’t come because he was ill.
6. Sara destroyed the crucial evidence a few weeks ago.
7. Vincent discussed the matter with the director over dinner the morning after.
8. It didn’t go well.
9. He chose the blue one over the black one and still wasn’t satisfied.
10. He bought her 5 different dresses for the engagement party over the weekend and she loved them all except the frilly one because it was too long. (6 questions!)