English for Today by Ganiu Abisoye Bamgbose (Dr GAB)
TAG QUESTIONS
A tag question is a short question attached to a statement for clarification. Examples: isn’t he? Can he? Haven’t you?
Although many native speakers use the tag, “innit”, for all kinds of declarations, the formation of tag questions in formal and pedagogical situations is rule-governed and the rules are discussed in this series.
Rule 1
A positive sentence takes a negative tag and a negative sentence takes a positive tag. Note that for the sake of this topic, a sentence is negative when it contains negators such as “no”, “not”, “never”, “hardly”.
Rule 2
When there is auxiliary (helping) verb in a sentence, the auxiliary verb is used to form the tag:
He can do it.
Can he?✖️
Can’t he?✔️
They have never seen me.
Haven’t they? ✖️
Have they? ✔️
GAB
