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Anonymous Posted 9 years ago
Vocabulary

Indirect question or noun phrase?

What a world we live in.
Is the sentence above an indirect question in which "do" is ellipted (before pronoun "we"), or is it a noun phrase in which "What a world" is the head of the phrase and "a world we live in" (a relative clause with the ellipted relative pronoun) its modifier?
  

Top answer

"What a world" is the complement of the preposition "in" It is not a question. It is a statement. The inverted construction is for emphasis.

  • "What a world" is the complement of the preposition "in" It is not a question.
  • It is a statement.
  • The inverted construction is for emphasis.
  • It is similar to the emphatic style of the cleft sentence.
  • What a good boy your Johnny is!
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1 Answers
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"What a world" is the complement of the preposition "in"
It is not a question. It is a statement.

The inverted construction is for emphasis. It is similar to the emphatic style of the cleft sentence.
What a good boy your Johnny is!
What a grand party that was!

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