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Glossary: closed interrogative

A type of interrogative clause in which an auxiliary verb appears before the Subject. Closed interrogatives are used to ask questions whose answer can be yes or no. See interrogative clause and Subject-verb inversion.

Clause types: statements, questions, commands and exclamations

The National Curriculum recognises four clause types (also called ‘sentence types’ ). They are usually used to ‘do different things’. These are statements, questions, commands and exclamations.

Each clause type has its own typical pattern (i.e. word order).

In statements, the Subject comes in its typical position before the verb. Here are some examples:

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Englicious (C) Survey of English Usage, UCL, 2012-21 | Supported by the AHRC and EPSRC. | Privacy | Cookies