J-Questions
Are there 3 doctors next door?
Yes, and they don't have wives...:)
So you understand that words change their position every time you are making a
question. Sometimes, however, they change in different ways.
So the Negative of
Is there a doctor here? would be: Is there not
a doctor here? Why a negative at all? Well, if someone tells you there
are only 2 doctors next door. You might want to know for sure if there are 2 or
3. Then you would
say:
Are there not 3 doctors next door?
And if you wanted a contraction of that -- with
Aren't , what do you do with "there"? You
can't just leave "there" out of the sentence.
So you stick it in after Aren't.
Aren't there 3 doctors? OR Are there not 3 doctors?
You really have to love grammar music!
Now, in addition to "Wh" questions like:
Why are there only 2 doctors? Notice in these you just
add the Wh word to the front of the Are there 2 doctors?
question. But -- too bad -- it does not stay that easy.
Try this one and, after you get it, we will talk about how it works. You may have
to guess a little, but let's see how you do: