Who is grammar

Whose Line Is It Anyway? Consequently, their roles had to be filled by CIA officers whose identities had not been revealed to the Russians. Tom Clancy, Commander in Chief , Bessie carried a lantern, whose light glanced on wet steps and gravel road sodden by a recent thaw.

Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games , Whose grammar got a boost from this read? Real-time suggestions, wherever you write. Whose vs. Whose is a possessive pronoun.

For example: whose sandwich is this? What are your politics? However, when there is a plural noun that serves as the predicate nominative for "who," the verb is plural.

Who speaks Spanish in this class? All thirty of us, teacher. Who is voting for incumbent? The whole town, all 50, of us. Who wants to win the lottery? Who are the people who are voting for the incumbent? Who are the people who want to win the lottery? Oxford University Press. I would like to illustrate my answer to the question with the following sentence: S1: There are two books on the desk. If we underline "two books" and ask our students to turn the sentence into a wh-question, we will get the following two questions: Q1: What is there on the desk?

Q2: What are there on the desk? Q1 is a REAL question. We ask such a question when we do not know whether there is one book, two books or even no books on the desk.

In other words, when we ask such a question, we do not presuppose what it is or the number of it. Q2 is different from Q1 in that we generally have presupposed that there is something and that the number of this something is grammatically plural. This occurs, for example, when we hang up a picture with several planes flying in the sky and do some oral question-and-answer exercises about the noun "plane" and its plural form "planes": What are there in the sky?

In most cases of this kind, we can see what it is and know the number of it. One more, subtle example: Host: What will you have to drink? Guest: What are the possibilities?

Similarly, interrogative who and what as subjects normally take a singular verb even when the speaker has reason to believe that more than one person or entity is involved. However, a plural verb may be used if other words in the sentence indicate that a plural subject is expected in the answer. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams?

Learn more. Asked 6 years, 10 months ago. Active 4 months ago. Viewed 32k times. Improve this question. Emily Emily 89 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 3 3 bronze badges. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Community Bot 1. But one can indeed ask 'Who are sitting in the chairs? The grammar exchange discussion I linked in my answer edited in has some interesting discussion on the topic.