# Who he is / who is he ?



## dioon89

Hi every one !! I know it is a indirect question and you have to write it like an affirmative sentence ... but is here where I get confused... I have understood that you know if it is indirect if you have at the start a modal verb... example  : do you know etc.. but in this question I'm going to write down  it is not... I


 Who he is  ?  Can someone tell my why please ? and if it possible explain it a bit



 And sorry if I had some grammar mistake my English is not the best  thanks everyone !!!


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## Bevj

¿Puedes explicar en español cuál es tu duda?  
Who is he?  
Do you know who he is?  
Do you know who is he?


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## IMD90

dioon89 said:


> Hi every one !! I know it is a indirect question and you have to write it like an affirmative sentence ... but is here where I get confused... I have understood that you know if it is indirect if you have at the start a modal verb... example  : do you know etc.. but in this question I'm going to write down  it is not... I
> 
> 
> Who he is  ?  Can someone tell my why please ? and if it possible explain it a bit
> 
> 
> 
> And sorry if I had some grammar mistake my English is not the best  thanks everyone !!!


When a question word is the suibject, there is no inversion
*Who is he* , here who is not the subject, it is 'HE'. rthere is inversion.
Do you know WHO he is , here the question word WHO is the subject, no inversion


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## dioon89

Muchas gracias por la ayuda .
 Y claro que si explico : el problema es que si la frase es indirecta tiene que haber un modal verb detrás por ejemplo como puse: do you know who he is ?  ... pero dado que en who he is?    En edta frase sin.. do you know ... no hay ningún modal verb primero  es por que me confundí   ... muchas gracias de nuevo de todas maneras creo que lo voy pillando


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## NickL

Do you know who he is? is perfectly correct.

Perhaps your confusion is with modal (auxiliary) verbs. You do not need a modal (auxiliary) verb, you need an auxiliary. Modals are just a type of auxiliary. Do, be and have are also auxiliary verbs, and you have one:- do.


OK?

Explain you question in Spanish si quedas con dudas!


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## Aeqin

When there is an interrogative pronoun, the verb swaps places with the noun and goes before it. This happens regardless of whether a question is being asked.

*"Do I know who he/she is?"
¿Yo sé quién es?
"I know who he/she is."
"Yo sé quién es."*


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## Agró

IMD90 said:


> When a question word is the suibject, there is no inversion
> *Who is he* , here who is not the subject, it is 'HE'. rthere is inversion.
> Do you know WHO he is , here the question word WHO is the subject, no inversion


Si te entiendo bien, la función sintáctica de "who" o de "he" cambia según el tipo de oración en la que aparezca porque dices que en _*Who is he?*_ _who _no es sujeto y que en _*Do you know WHO he is?*_ sí lo es. ¿Podrías explicar por qué?


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## IMD90

Agró said:


> Si te entiendo bien, la función sintáctica de "who" o de "he" cambia según el tipo de oración en la que aparezca porque dices que en _*Who is he?*_ _who _no es sujeto y que en _*Do you know WHO he is?*_ sí lo es. ¿Podrías explicar por qué?


Muy simple *do you know is a yes/no question about who he is, would be awkward and redundant to have two questions Yes/no question with auxiliary 'DO' and a  'WH' question.  who can give me some help?, do you know who can give me some help?. Ahora si me preguntas por qué who is he? no es sujeto, pues este pronombre interrogativo está preguntando por el sujeto 'HE'.*


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## IMD90

Aeqin said:


> When there is an interrogative pronoun, the verb swaps places with the noun and goes before it. This happens regardless of whether a question is being asked.
> 
> *"Do I know who he/she is?"
> ¿Yo sé quién es?
> "I know who he/she is."
> "Yo sé quién es."*


Yes, but it is an *affirmative  *proposition o sentence.


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## IMD90

WHO además puede ser complemento directo (whom), o el objeto de una preposición., pronombre relativo .


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## Aeqin

IMD90 said:


> Yes, but it is an *affirmative  *proposition o sentence.


Oops, sorry. I forgot to mention negatives. I'll add them here:

In a declarative sentence that is negative, the structure is the same except the construction is *subject + do + not + verb*. 

_*"I do not know who he/she is." *_or *"I don't know who he/she is."
"No sé quién es."*

Here are the contractions, if you wish to use them: 
*do + not = don't
does + not = doesn't*


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## gato radioso

dioon89 said:


> Hi every one !! I know it is a indirect question and you have to write it like an affirmative sentence ... but is here where I get confused... I have understood that you know if it is indirect if you have at the start a modal verb... example  : do you know etc.. but in this question I'm going to write down  it is not... I
> 
> 
> Who he is  ?  Can someone tell my why please ? and if it possible explain it a bit
> 
> 
> 
> And sorry if I had some grammar mistake my English is not the best  thanks everyone !!!



Let me give you a tip, which has always been very useful for me:

1. Who is he? Is a direct question, because you want to know just that.
2. Does Margaret know who he is? Is an indirect question, because here you want to know whether Margaret knows or not, not the identity of that man.

3. Where is Brighton? Direct question, you want to know just that.
4. Do you know where Brighton is? Indirect, what you´re really doing here is asking someone if he/she knows about other thing, which is expressed in a clause embedded in your question.


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## dioon89

Thanks  for your help guys  !!!   gato radioso it helped me a lot


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## gato radioso

dioon89 said:


> Thanks  for your help guys  !!!   gato radioso it helped me a lot


De nada, amigo!


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## Forero

There are essentially two ways to ask a direct question. One way is to use the format of a statement but with a question mark at the end:
_
Romeo is who?
Juliet saw who_(_m_)_ on the balcony?
Never had she seen a what?_ [There is "inversion" here because a negative adverb is first. The same thing happens in a statement.]

This is used mostly to clarify whether we have heard/read something right.

But the most common way to ask a question is to put the interrogative part first and "invert" by putting the tense-bearing verb ahead of the subject:

_Who is Romeo?
Who_(_m_)_ did Juliet see on the balcony?
What had she never seen?
_
But when a question is embedded in another clause, we call it indirect, and the interrogative word comes first but the rest of the clause is in the usual order of a statement:
_
I don't know who Romeo is.
I don't know who_(_m_)_ Juliet saw on the balcony.
I don't know what she had never seen._ [Here the negative adverb can't be first _(what_ has to be first_),_ so there is no inversion.]

For a direct yes-or-no question, there is no question word, but we still "invert", and we add _whether_ (sometimes _if_) in front as the interrogative:
_
That's Romeo?
Is that Romeo?  
I don't know whether_/_if that is Romeo._

Once the question is answered, however, _whether_ is not used:
_
I do know that is Romeo.
I know that is not Romeo._

When the interrogative part is first in a direct question, it can also be the subject. Then there can be no inversion:

_Does who love Juliet?_
_Who loves Juliet?_
_I don't know who loves Juliet._

This means that a direct question can make it hard to tell what is the subject, while an indirect question is always clear about it.

For example, suppose George is Romeo in a school play. I just made "George" the subject of "is" in my last sentence because George is a real person, whereas Romeo is a fictional character. Here is what happens to the word order when "George" is meant to be a subject and "Romeo" is not:

_Who is George in the school play?_ [_George_ is the subject. Inversion puts _is_ before _George_.]
_I don't know who George is in the school play._ [Indirect question, so no inversion. The subject is obviously _George_.]
_
Who is Romeo in the school play?_ [_Romeo_ is not the subject: _who_ is. _Is_ cannot come before _who_, so there is no inversion here.]
_I don't know who is Romeo in the school play._ [Indirect question, so no inversion. The subject is obviously _who_.]

So "I don't know who is he" is possible (since "I don't know who is Romeo" is possible), but it is awkward because it puts a personal pronoun that is not a subject in a stressed position (Should it be "him"?) and because "he" sounds like a real person and probably ought to be the subject.


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## kaoruca

En todo caso, en frases interrogativas directas con el verbo "be" como único verbo (en su forma simple, como habéis puesto), tanto si el "wh-" es sujeto como si es atributo, la frase se escribiría igual: wh- + to be +...?


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## anahiseri

así lo explico yo a mis alumnos:

*pregunta directa ("de verdad"), orden de elementos:*
<Q-word> -   Aux verb  -  Subject -   Verb  -  ....  etc
 *who          -              is          -              he ?*

*pregunta indirecta (que no lleva signo interrogante*
orden "normal":  <Q-word>    Subject   Verb   Object .... etc
I don't know        *-          who   -    he   -    is .*

como ves, "he" es sujeto en ambas oraciones.
 HOPE THIS HELPS
Lo siento, no consigo ordenar las palabras bien en columnas.


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## FromPA

Agró said:


> Si te entiendo bien, la función sintáctica de "who" o de "he" cambia según el tipo de oración en la que aparezca porque dices que en _*Who is he?*_ _who _no es sujeto y que en _*Do you know WHO he is?*_ sí lo es. ¿Podrías explicar por qué?


How unbelievably confusing this all is! How does anyone ever learn English? 

In the sentence "Do you know who he is?, I don't think that "who" is the subject of anything; I think it's a relative pronoun introducing a relative clause that acts as the direct object of the verb "know".

The basic construction is "Do you know something?", with "something" being the direct object.
Do you know him? Him is the direct object of know.
Do you know that he is my brother?  "That he is my brother" is a relative clause acting as the direct object.
Do you know who he is?  "Who he is" is a relative clause acting as the direct object and it's no more a question requiring inversion than is the clause "that he is my brother."

That's how I would try to make sense of this mess.


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## anahiseri

Yo no sé si el análisis sintáctico que hago en el post 17 es correcto o no, pero las reglas de orden de las palabras son las que vienen en los libros de gramática, y con estas explicaciones mis alumnos se aclaran de cómo construir las oraciones, que es de lo que se trata.


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## Forero

FromPA said:


> How unbelievably confusing this all is! How does anyone ever learn English?
> 
> In the sentence "Do you know who he is?, I don't think that "who" is the subject of anything; I think it's a relative pronoun introducing a relative clause that acts as the direct object of the verb "know".
> 
> The basic construction is "Do you know something?", with "something" being the direct object.
> Do you know him? Him is the direct object of know.
> Do you know that he is my brother?  "That he is my brother" is a relative clause acting as the direct object.
> Do you know who he is?  "Who he is" is a relative clause acting as the direct object and it's no more a question requiring inversion than is the clause "that he is my brother."
> 
> That's how I would try to make sense of this mess.


In "I don't know who he is", _who_ is not an object. If it were, we could get away with changing to it _whom_.

Yes, the clause "who he is" is the direct object of "know", but the pronoun _who_ is not objective. In this case, _who_ is a complement (a "predicate pronoun", in particular) of the verb _is_, so it is neither subject nor object here.

_He_ really is the subject of _is_, so it comes after _is_ in the direct question "Who is he?" and before it in the indirect question that is the direct object of "know".

To be accurate, _who_ here is an interrogative pronoun, which is not quite the same as a relative pronoun, and this makes the clause interrogative rather than relative. Still, the order of the words is the same as in a relative clause.





anahiseri said:


> así lo explico yo a mis alumnos:
> 
> *pregunta directa ("de verdad"), orden de elementos:*
> <Q-word> -   Aux verb  -  Subject -   Verb  -  ....  etc
> *who          -              is          -              he ?*
> 
> *pregunta indirecta (que no lleva signo interrogante*
> orden "normal":  <Q-word>    Subject   Verb   Object .... etc
> I don't know        *-          who   -    he   -    is .*
> 
> como ves, "he" es sujeto en ambas oraciones.
> HOPE THIS HELPS
> Lo siento, no consigo ordenar las palabras bien en columnas.


Otro ejemplo:

Pregunta directa:
<Q-word subject> <verb> <complement>
_Who is the tallest?
_
Preguna indirecta:
                   <Q-word subject> <verb> <complement>
_I don't know who is the tallest._

El orden no cambia porque, en este caso, _who_ es el sujeto.


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## anahiseri

Pregunta indirecta:
                   <Q-word subject> <verb> <complement>
[I said:
			
		

> I don't know who is the tallest.
> 
> El orden no cambia porque, en este caso, _who_ es el sujeto.



Eso es otra tema. Yo les explico a mis alumnos que cuando la partícula interrogativa es el sujeto, entonces la pregunta se hace "a la española", porque la fórmula
<Q-word> -  Aux Verb -   *Subject*  -   Verb .........
ya no vale; se podría decir que la columna del Q-word y la columna del Subject se fusionan, cómo bien lo has puesto tú, y el Aux verb desaparece. Aunque eso se nota más en las preguntas con auténticos auxiliares (did, does, etc.)
*<Q-word - **Subject >*   --   Verb  ..........


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## kaoruca

anahiseri said:


> así lo explico yo a mis alumnos:
> 
> *pregunta directa ("de verdad"), orden de elementos:*
> <Q-word> -   Aux verb  -  Subject -   Verb  -  ....  etc
> *who          -              is          -              he ?*
> 
> *pregunta indirecta (que no lleva signo interrogante*
> orden "normal":  <Q-word>    Subject   Verb   Object .... etc
> I don't know        *-          who   -    he   -    is .*
> 
> como ves, "he" es sujeto en ambas oraciones.
> HOPE THIS HELPS
> Lo siento, no consigo ordenar las palabras bien en columnas.


Veo que amb@s usamos la sintaxis para arrojar algo de luz y enseñar


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## Aviador

kaoruca said:


> Veo que amb@s usamos...


¿Veo que qué, kaoruka?


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## kaoruca

Aviador, era sólo un comentario para anahiseri diciéndole que yo también uso lo mismo para explicar las estructuras en inglés. Exactamente lo mismo


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## Hinata Sama

Forero said:


> There are essentially two ways to ask a direct question. One way is to use the format of a statement but with a question mark at the end:
> 
> _Romeo is who?
> Juliet saw who_(_m_)_ on the balcony?
> Never had she seen a what?_ [There is "inversion" here because a negative adverb is first. The same thing happens in a statement.]
> 
> This is used mostly to clarify whether we have heard/read something right.
> 
> But the most common way to ask a question is to put the interrogative part first and "invert" by putting the tense-bearing verb ahead of the subject:
> 
> _Who is Romeo?
> Who_(_m_)_ did Juliet see on the balcony?
> What had she never seen?_
> 
> But when a question is embedded in another clause, we call it indirect, and the interrogative word comes first but the rest of the clause is in the usual order of a statement:
> 
> _I don't know who Romeo is.
> I don't know who_(_m_)_ Juliet saw on the balcony.
> I don't know what she had never seen._ [Here the negative adverb can't be first _(what_ has to be first_),_ so there is no inversion.]
> 
> For a direct yes-or-no question, there is no question word, but we still "invert", and we add _whether_ (sometimes _if_) in front as the interrogative:
> 
> _That's Romeo?
> Is that Romeo?
> I don't know whether_/_if that is Romeo._
> 
> Once the question is answered, however, _whether_ is not used:
> 
> _I do know that is Romeo.
> I know that is not Romeo._
> 
> When the interrogative part is first in a direct question, it can also be the subject. Then there can be no inversion:
> 
> _Does who love Juliet?_
> _Who loves Juliet?_
> _I don't know who loves Juliet._
> 
> This means that a direct question can make it hard to tell what is the subject, while an indirect question is always clear about it.
> 
> For example, suppose George is Romeo in a school play. I just made "George" the subject of "is" in my last sentence because George is a real person, whereas Romeo is a fictional character. Here is what happens to the word order when "George" is meant to be a subject and "Romeo" is not:
> 
> _Who is George in the school play?_ [_George_ is the subject. Inversion puts _is_ before _George_.]
> _I don't know who George is in the school play._ [Indirect question, so no inversion. The subject is obviously _George_.]
> 
> _Who is Romeo in the school play?_ [_Romeo_ is not the subject: _who_ is. _Is_ cannot come before _who_, so there is no inversion here.]
> _I don't know who is Romeo in the school play._ [Indirect question, so no inversion. The subject is obviously _who_.]
> 
> So "I don't know who is he" is possible (since "I don't know who is Romeo" is possible), but it is awkward because it puts a personal pronoun that is not a subject in a stressed position (Should it be "him"?) and because "he" sounds like a real person and probably ought to be the subject.


_I don't know who is Romeo in the school play_

Do you think without context, people will think what you try to convey is that you don't know who is the actor that plays Romeo, instead of,
which character is Remeo in the play?
I have been thinking about this question all day as to why the be verb is not put at the end of this type of sentences sometimes.
My conlusion is that it just a thing many people do when it is not a simple pronoun in the interrogatory clause like it, she, he,
but rather modified, like the actor that plays Romeo, the best athlete in the world, a lot of people would just put the be before them,
because that makes the sentence sound more natural and flow better.

Hope to hear your thoughts on that.


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## Forero

Hinata Sama said:


> _I don't know who is Romeo in the school play_
> 
> Do you think without context, people will think what you try to convey is that you don't know who is the actor that plays Romeo, instead of,
> which character is Remeo in the play?
> I have been thinking about this question all day as to why the be verb is not put at the end of this type of sentences sometimes.
> My conlusion is that it just a thing many people do when it is not a simple pronoun in the interrogatory clause like it, she, he,
> but rather modified, like the actor that plays Romeo, the best athlete in the world, a lot of people would just put the be before them,
> because that makes the sentence sound more natural and flow better.
> 
> Hope to hear your thoughts on that.


Sometimes "be" is symmetric like "=", but sometimes it isn't.

When the verb is symmetric, it is usually best to make _who_ a complement rather than a subject, which puts the verb at the end; but when it is not symmetric, the complement has to come after the verb.

When _is_ means "plays the role of", it is not symmetric:

_I don't know who is Romeo._ [Someone is Romeo. I don't know who.]
= "I don't know who plays Romeo." [Someone plays Romeo. I don't know who.]
= "I don't know what actor plays the character Romeo."

_I don't know who Romeo plays._ [Romeo plays someone. I don't know who.]
= "I don't know what character the actor named Romeo plays."

_I don't know who Romeo is._ [Romeo is somebody. I don't know who.]
= "I can't identify the person (actor, character, or other) named Romeo."


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## Hinata Sama

Forero said:


> Sometimes "be" is symmetric like "=", but sometimes it isn't.
> 
> When the verb is symmetric, it is usually best to make _who_ a complement rather than a subject, which puts the verb at the end; but when it is not symmetric, the complement has to come after the verb.
> 
> When _is_ means "plays the role of", it is not symmetric:
> 
> _I don't know who is Romeo._ [Someone is Romeo. I don't know who.]
> = "I don't know who plays Romeo." [Someone plays Romeo. I don't know who.]
> = "I don't know what actor plays the character Romeo."
> 
> _I don't know who Romeo plays._ [Romeo plays someone. I don't know who.]
> = "I don't know what character the actor named Romeo plays."
> 
> _I don't know who Romeo is._ [Romeo is somebody. I don't know who.]
> = "I can't identify the person (actor, character, or other) named Romeo."


Thanks. Then according to your reasoning, do you think the *is* a symmetric in _She is the youngest daughter of hers_?


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## Forero

Hinata Sama said:


> Thanks. Then according to your reasoning, do you think the *is* a symmetric in _She is the youngest daughter of hers_?


"Of hers" does not fit the sentence, but this _is_ is not entirely symmetric:

_I don't know who is the youngest daughter._
_I don't know who the youngest daughter is._


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## Hinata Sama

Forero said:


> "Of hers" does not fit the sentence, but this _is_ is not entirely symmetric:
> 
> _I don't know who is the youngest daughter._
> _I don't know who the youngest daughter is._


Why do you think of hers doesn't fit here?


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## Forero

Hinata Sama said:


> Why do you think of hers doesn't fit here?


Whose daughter are we talking about?


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