MEANING OF INTERROGATIVE PRONOUNS
Let us know another type of Pronoun – the interrogative pronouns. Interrogative pronouns are used to ask questions and those sentences always end with a question mark. This type of pronoun tells something which we don’t know. Interrogative pronoun asks a question.
4 MAIN INTERROGATIVE PRONOUNS
The four main interrogative pronouns are who, whom, what and which.
We have learned before that possessive pronouns ‘whose’ can also be added in the interrogative pronoun which becomes an interrogative possessive pronoun.
- We use ‘who’ for a subject and ‘whom’ for an object incase of a person.
- We use ‘what’ in the case of talking about things.
- We use ‘which’ when we talk about a person or a thing.
- We use ‘whose’ when we talk about a person.
In the English language, we rarely use the word ‘whom’. This is the reason why most of us and the native speakers say “Who were you talking to?”
EXAMPLES
| QUESTION | ANSWER |
| Who asked you? | My mom told me about it. |
| Whom were you speaking to? | I was speaking to Kevin. |
| What’s happening? | They are arguing. |
| What do you need? | I need some food. |
| We’ve found everyone’s passport. Whose did you find? | I found your passport. |
| This is an abandoned house. Whose house is it? | It is a house of an old couple. |
| Which will the teacher meet first? | The teacher will meet her parents first. |
| Which came last? | The recent car came last. |
Remember that sometimes we also make the use of suffixes such as ‘-ever’ in order to create compounds from some of the mentioned pronouns like whoever, whatever, and whichever.
We use ‘-ever’ to add emphasis mostly to depict confusion or surprise elements.
Let us understand with some examples:
- Whoever would want to rob from such a big house?
- Whatever did she do to make her happy like this?
- They are all terrible. Whichever will you not choose?
