General questions

In general questions the speaker is interested to know whether some event or phenomenon asked about exists or does not exist; accordingly the answer may be positive or negative, thus containing or implying “yes” or “no”.

A general question opens with an auxiliary, modal, or link verb followed by the subject. Such questions are characterized by the rising tone.

Does your sister go figure-skating? Is that girl a friend of yours?

“Yes-no” questions may be incomplete and reduced to two words only:

Can you? Does he?

A negative "yes-no" question usually adds some emotional colouring of surprise or disappointment.

Haven’t you posted the letter yet? (Why?)

Tag questions

A tag (disjunctive) question is a short “yes-no” question added to a statement. It consists only of an operator prompted by the predicate verb of the statement and a pronoun prompted by the subject. Generally the tag has a rising tone.

You know French, don’t you? - Yes, a bit.

A tag question is added to a statement for confirmation and therefore is sometimes called a confirmative question. It corresponds to such Russian tag questions as He так ли? Не правда ли? Ведь так? The speaker expects the listener to share his view of some situation rather than to give him some new information. The most usual patterns of sentences with tag questions are as follows.

Positive statement - negative tag - positive answer

You knew that before, didn’t you? - Yes, I did.

Negative statement - positive tag - negative answer

You didn’t know that before, did you? - No, I didn’t.

The answer, however, may be unexpected, as in: You didn’t know that before, did you ? - But I did.

The falling tone of the tag is also possible. It makes the whole sentence sound like a statement. The speaker actually knows the answer and can do without it.

There is one more sentence pattern with a tag question which is less frequently used.

Positive statement - positive tag

You knew about it before, did you?

Negative statement - negative tag

You didn’t know about it before, didn’t you?

This sentence pattern is used when the speaker comes to a conclusion concerning some event. Such sentences may begin with the conjunction so.

So you knew about it before, did you?

A sentence pattern with a tag question may serve as a response to the previous remark. Thus it forms a comment having some emotional attitude, such as surprise, anger, sarcasm.

He brought these flowers, too. - He did, did he? - Yes.

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