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Anonymous Posted 19 years ago
Grammar

s in interrogative sentences

Hi, would you be so kind to answer the following:

in interrogative sentences the verb shouldn’t take the s, but what about : “what happens next?” why does in this case, the verb “happen” takes the s?
  

Top answer

" Perhaps you are thinking about situation in which you have the verb "to do" in the question: What did he do? What did happen after that? When you have a form of the verb "to do," it will be conjugated, but the other verb will remain in the bare infinitive form - do/happen/etc.

— BarbaraPA

  • " Perhaps you are thinking about situation in which you have the verb "to do" in the question: What did he do?
  • What did happen after that?
  • When you have a form of the verb "to do," it will be conjugated, but the other verb will remain in the bare infinitive form - do/happen/etc.
  • That applies to normal declarative as well: It did happen that way!
  • He did not do that.
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2 Answers
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I'm not sure where you came up with this rule about the verb not taking the s, but the verb will agree with the subject (What is he doing here?) or take the third-person singular, as in "What happens next?"

Perhaps you are thinking about situation in which you have the verb "to do" in the question: What did he do? What did happen after that?

When you have a form of the verb "to d
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in interrogative sentences the verb shouldn’t take the s
That's not true when you question the subject. You may find useful, though it may be much more detailed and complex than you need. Note particularly that if the question word doesn't cross the verb in one of those steps, a do is not introduced and the s stays on the original verb.

Not qu
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