A Study on Structural and Semantic patterns of
Wh-questions in English

Nguyễn Văn Cương Trường Đại học KHXH&NV
Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Vo Dai Quang
Năm bảo vệ: 2011 Abstract: The thesis entitled “A Study on structural and semantic patterns of Wh-
questions in English” is to analyze and illustrate the types of wh-questions and their
semantic features. This one is also to investigate the students' categories of mistakes
when using wh-questions, find out the causes, suggest some possible solutions to these
matters, and propose several pedagogical implications for the teachers at the research site.
This study is divided into three major sections. The first one sets out the rationale of the
study as well as the aims, the methodology and the design of the study. The second
section contains three chapters. Chapter 1 offers the most relevant factors involving a wh-
question such as notions of wh-questions, wh-rhetorical questions, operators, wh-words
and their semantic features relating information structure, presupposition and theme and
rheme. Chapter 2 is to describe the types of wh-questions based on structures and
discourse and the types of presuppositions in wh-questions. Chapter 3 is the study about
the mistakes that the students in Kinh Mon high school often make in using a wh-
question. The data were collected among 100 eleven grade students in Kinh Mon high
school by means of questionnaires. The findings highlighted students’ categories of
mistakes including wrong use of wh-words, wrong use of operators, non-inversion failure
and some other subtypes. Through the findings, the author also assumes some causes of
the mistakes and suggests some possible solutions in order to help students avoid
committing these types of mistakes.

1.3.1. Wh-word functions 7
1.3.1.1. Wh-words as interrogative pronouns 7
1.3.1.2 Wh-words as determiners 10
1.3.1.3. Wh-words as adverbs 10
1.4. Given - New Information Structure 12
1.4.1. Given information 12
1.4.2. New information 12
1.4.3 Information structure 12
1.5. Theme -Rheme Structure 13 v
1.5 Theme- Rheme Structure in wh-questions 14
1.6. Presupposition 15
Chapter 2 : The structural and semantic patterns
of English wh-questions 16
2.1. STRUCTURAL PATTERNS OF ENGLISH WH-QUESTIONS 16
2.1.1. Wh-words as subjects of the wh-questions 16
2.1.2. Non-subject wh-questions 18
2.1.3. Verb-oriented questions 19
2.1.4. Wh-questions with prepositions 20
2.1.5. Emphatic wh-questions. 21
2.1.6. Negative structures in Wh- questions 21
2.1.7. Response questions 21
2.1.7.1. Short response questions 21
2.1.7.2. Wh-echo questions 22
2.1.8. Multiple wh-element Questions 23
2.1.9. Wh-rhetorical questions 24
2.1.10. Formulaic wh-questions 26
2.2. SEMANTIC PATTERNS OF ENGLISH WH-QUESTIONS 28

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ABSTRACT
The thesis entitled “A Study on structural and semantic patterns of Wh-
questions in English” is to analyze and illustrate the types of wh-questions and their semantic
features. This one is also to investigate the students' categories of mistakes when using wh-
questions, find out the causes, suggest some possible solutions to these matters, and propose
several pedagogical implications for the teachers at the research site. This study is divided into
three major sections. The first one sets out the rationale of the study as well as the aims, the
methodology and the design of the study. The second section contains three chapters. Chapter 1
offers the most relevant factors involving a wh-question such as notions of wh-questions, wh-
rhetorical questions, operators, wh-words and their semantic features relating information
structure, presupposition and theme and rheme. Chapter 2 is to describe the types of wh-questions
based on structures and discourse and the types of presuppositions in wh-questions. Chapter 3 is
the study about the mistakes that the students in Kinh Mon high school often make in using a wh-
question. The data were collected among 100 eleven grade students in Kinh Mon high school by
means of questionnaires. The findings highlighted students’ categories of mistakes including
wrong use of wh-words, wrong use of operators, non-inversion failure and some other subtypes.
Through the findings, the author also assumes some causes of the mistakes and suggests some
possible solutions in order to help students avoid committing these types of mistakes.


Besides making the discussion during a speaking lesson successful, questions also play an
important role in our daily life. We are not able to keep communicating going on well without
asking questions. We ask in order to exchange information, ideas, feeling and knowledge. On the
other hand, we sometimes ask questions not for the above purposes but for confirmation, refusal
irony or reply avoidance. It is undeniable that questions can not be missed in communication.
English wh-questions have long been the subject of the study of many researchers and
linguists. Each of them investigates some aspects of this type of questions. Their study on
English wh-questions have provided a great help for Vietnamese learners of English. There are
some MA thesis that pay attention to English Wh-questions. Hoa N.T.X (1996) studies English
questions in terms of S-P inversion. Meanwhile, Ms Nguyet D.T.M (1996) pays her attention to
the aspect of English questions concerning teachers' questions and politeness strategies. And
Tuyet L.T.A contrasts English wh-questions and their equivalents in Vietnamese in terms of
syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features. Especially there is also a Ph.D dissertation
investigating English Wh-questions. Quang V.D (2000) looks at contrative analysis of questions
in English and Vietnamese in terms of semantic and pragmatic features in his Ph.D project.
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Generally, such researchers mentioned above studied English wh-questions from different angles
and mostly either focus on syntactic and semantic features of English Wh-questions or provide a
theoretically general picture of wh-questions between the two languages, English and
Vietnamese. However, besides such certain contributions, there still exist some gaps that need
dealing with.
There are a lot of aspects concerning English wh-questions, however, in this paper the
author would like to devote all my interest in the structural and semantic patterns of Wh-
questions in English. Then he would like to investigate the kinds of mistakes in using wh-
questions the students in Kinh Mon High School often make. Basing on the findings, the author
can make some suggestions in order to help the students to overcome these difficulties and make
questions fluently.

2. Aims of the study

questions. The study is conducted by carefully collecting materials from various sources to have
full-blown information of English wh-questions. Secondly, the author designs a questionaire in
order to find out what categories of mistakes the studetnts often make when using wh-questions.
The students' errors and mistakes will be analized. All comments, remarks, recommendations and
conclusion are based on the data analysis.
The sheets of questionaire will be collected randomly so that this research will help to
gain reliable data and a close investigation into the problems that the students are encountering

6. Design of the study
This study is divided into three main parts:
- Part 1 is the Introduction of the study. It includes the rationale for choosing the topic, the
aims, the objectives, the scope, the methods and design of the study.
- Part 2 contains three chapters, in which Chapter 1 provides readers some theoretical
background on English questions in general, wh-words and their functions and the operators
and their functions in English question in brief. Moreover, some basic terms ( such as given
and new information, theme and rheme, and presuppositions ) are also discussed. Chapter 2 is
also the main part of the study, provides the detailed analysis of English wh-questions in term
of structural and semantic patterns of wh-questions in English. Chapter 3 presents a small
research of the author to find out some common mistakes made by Vietnamese students in
using English wh-questions and to suggest some possible solutions.
- Part 3 is the conclusion of the study. It also gives some implication for teaching and learning
wh-questions and some suggestions for further studies. 6

Part 2: Development
Chapter 1 : Literature review
This chapter deals with the relevant matters in wh-questions to help language leaners
understand how to use English wh-questions effectively. The relevant matters are:

Chapter 2
The structural and semantic patterns of English wh-questions
In the last chapter, the author has deeply discussed some relevant matters relating to English wh-
questions, in this chapter, the author would like to examine the structural pattern of the wh-
questions in general and then he will thoroughly illustrate the use of wh-questions in daily
discourse and finally he will discuss some types of semantic features of the wh-questions -
presuppositions.
2.1. STRUCTURAL PATTERNS OF ENGLISH WH-QUESTIONS
2.1.1. Wh-words as subjects of the wh-questions.
2.1.2. Non-subject wh-questions
2.1.3. Verb-oriented questions
2.1.4. Wh-questions with prepositions
2.1.5. Emphatic wh-questions.
2.1.6. Negative structures in Wh- questions
2.1.7. Response questions
2.1.7.1. Short response questions
2.1.7.2 Wh-echo questions
2.1.8. Multiple wh-element Questions.
2.1.9. Wh-rhetorical questions.
2.1.10. Formulaic wh-questions
2.2. SEMANTIC PATTERNS OF ENGLISH WH-QUESTIONS.
In the previous section, the author has discussed some types of wh-questions in terms of structure
and discourse functions. In the following part, the author would like to investigate the most
prominent feature of wh-questions- the presuppositions. Because of the focus of the study, I only
discuss its semantic patterns in terms of persuppositions.
These six types of presupposition can be brought together under the heading of potential
presupposition which represents the whole. In the discussion below, the author would like to
discover how these six types of presuppositions appear in English wh-questions.
The existential presupposition is assumed to be either in possessive constructions or in any
definite noun.


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Chapter 3:
Errors and mistakes likely to be made by eleventh grade
students in using wh-questions.

3.1. Introduction
This chapter will analyze the situation with the description of the subjects, the materials
used by informants and the instruments applied to collect data in order to find out the
mistakes that the participants in this study made
3.2. Setting
3.2.1 Setting of the study
3.2.2. Participants of the study
3.3 Research Instrument - Questionaire
3.3.1 Objectives of the survey questionaire.
3.3.2 The survey questionnaire
3.4. Procedures
3.5. Findings
When the students' finished sheets are collected and analyzed, the experimenter finds that there
are some very common mistakes which are divided into the following categories:
* Wrong use of wh-word: The question in which the students do not use the right question
word. Because the information needed to ask in each question has been identified earlier by
underlining the word or phrase that the students need to ask. Therefore, the question word must

asking about the quantity. This last type accounts for 8.3% of the total mistakes.
3.6. The causes of Vietnamese students’ mistakes.
From the analysis, students’ difficulties in making wh-questions are concluded to be caused
by four factors. The first one is misunderstanding of wh-words, which means that students only
remember a part of the semantic features of the wh-words and they use them in every situation.
For example, the quesition word "what" can be used in many situations, not just to ask for non-
personal nouns, but they are used to ask about the person and adjectives as well. The second one
is the misuse of operators. Many of them can not remember when to use " be" and when to use
"do". In other words, they think only "be" is the only operator in situations when "do" is absent.
They also find it hard to use the correct tense of the sentence. The third factor is that the students
have difficulties in memorising the structures of the wh-questions though they are quite simple.
The last but not the least important factor is that students may find it hard to remember some
fixed idiomatic expressions, such as “What like?”, " What for?" " Why didn't ". If the
students do not have much time to practise these, they may not remember and therefore, they may
misuse them.
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3.7. Solutions to the problems.
Wh-questions have been taught in junior high school; however, teachers do not take much notice
of them. They only emphasize the grammatical rules. As for the different meanings of wh-words,
they don’t put much emphasis, not to mention the subtle differences of the wh-words which
share the same meaning, for example " which" and " what" with definite reference and indefinite
reference respectively. There are three drawbacks in teaching wh-questions in present classroom
practice.
The first one is the ignorance of wh-words and wh-questions. Since the grammatical rules of this
type of questions are very easy, teachers do not often put much emphasis on them. They only ask
students to memorize the grammatical rules. They do not emphasize the importance of using wh-
questions correctly in discussing and exchanging information. The ignorance of wh-questions in
teaching causes students to underestimate the importance of asking questions. Besides, they do
not know the precise roles of each wh-word. They only know that who is used to ask about

along with the wh-word. Therefore, it is necessary to help students to master the structural
patterns of wh-questions.
Through the careful description, the English wh-words, their functions, the operator system, how
these two items are used to form a question and what presupposition is it in each question are
made out. Students can clearly distinguish these things and apply them in the right situations. In
addition, through the study findings, the students' difficulties in making a wh-question are
anticipated and therefore, can be prevented in advance. In other words, most problems mentioned
above can be solved.
3.8. Summary of findings
From the analysis above, we can come to the following conclusion about the categories of
mistakes that the students in Kinh Mon high school often make.
The study has come up with four main findings. Firstly, seemingly, the students do not have
much time practising using wh-words as well as making questions. Therefore, many students are
still confused how to use the correct wh-word in each situation. This is the reason why the
majority of the students make the mistakes called " wrong use of wh-words". The second
common mistake is the misuse of operator. They often use " be" instead of "do" when making
questions about the situations where "do" does not appear or they use the wrong tense.
Additionally, they may not invert the operators to the front of the subjects in non-subject wh-
questions. Moreover, they may omit "do" in verb-oriented questions especially when "do" is the
object of another verb. One more prominant mistake is the omission of "are there" in the question
asking about the quantity. On the whole, the study has proved to be beneficial as it helps the
author learn about the msitakes that the students make. Through the findings, he has assumed
some causes of the mistakes and he has suggested some ways to help the students overcome their
mistakes and improve their English competence.

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PART 3: CONCLUSION
1. Conclusions.
As far as the theoretical background is concerned, the study has briefly presented concepts

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these matters, teachers should realize the difficulties in students’ learning and using wh-
questions. The main difficulty lies not only in their forms but in the meaning aspect as well. In
addition, students are also confused with the subtle differences among the functions of wh-words
in each situation. One of the suggestions is that wh-words should be presented according to the
functions. The other is about ways which help students to realize the functions and the use of
English operators in certain setting by regarding to the context of utterance. First, the tenses of
the sentences and their auxiliaries should be clearly defined. Then show the students how and
when to use these auxiliaries in questions. Besides, teachers also remind the students that when
asking about the verbs of the sentence, "do" must be used to replace that verb. Teachers should
create some real world situations to make them acquainted with the different usages of wh-words
and wh-questions. The last thing to be taken into consideration is that students should be
encouraged to freely participate in the discussion activities. By that way, students' abilities to ask
questions will be improved.
3. Limitations of the study.
This paper is to describe the structural and semantic features of English wh-questions, and
to identify the errors and mistakes likely to be made by students. The author has subjectively
drawn out some findings about the structures and semantics that are used in English wh-
questions. However, with limited amount of time spent on the research and limited number of
participants, the results of the categories of errors and mistakes are confined to the eleventh
graders in Kinh Mon High School only. The author has put a lot of efforts on this study and also
got much help from teachers, friends and family. Even though, it is desired that this study may be
of some help to those who are interested in the topic, it will be a great source of happiness for the
writer if readers contribute for the thesis improvement. Your reading, judgment, suggestions will
be highly appreciated with gratefulness. However, for such a large topic as this, it requires much
more efforts, time and knowledge to cover, therefore, the study can not avoid imperfection and
limitation.
4. Suggestions for further research.
On the basis of this study, the following further research may be feasible.

17. Nguyet, D.T.M. ( 1996) A Cross-Cultural Study of Question Functions and The English
Department at Hanoi University of Foreign Studies in Vietnam. MA. Thesis. Hanoi University
of Foreign Studies.
18.Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S. (1987). A University Grammar of English. London: Longman.

48
19. Quirk, R, Greenbaum, S, Leech, G and Svartvik, J. (1985). A Comprehensive grammar of
the English language. Longman Group Limited.
20. Quirk, R, Greenbaum, S, Leech, G and Svartvik, J. (1972). A Grammar of Contemporary
English. Longman Group Limited.
21. Seuren, Peiter. (1985). Discourse Semantics. Blackwell, Oxford
22. Swan, M. (1991). Practical English Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
23. Tuyet, L.T.A. (2001), Graduation Paper: English Wh- Questions and their equivalents in
Vietnamese, VNU-CFL, Hanoi.
24. Vo Dai Quang. (2005), Cấu trúc Ngữ nghiã của câu hỏi chính danh trong Tiếng Anh và
Tiếng Việt. Công trình nghiên cứu cấp Đai học Quốc gia Hà Nội
25.Yule, G. (1998). Explaining English Grammar. Oxford University Press.

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