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Recently, I've stumbled upon a sentence that seems to be in contrary to what I've been taught about the word order in positive sentences. At some forum, a guy asked a grammar question, and one of the answers started with the following sentence:

"I've already said what I think is the difference when an ing-verb follows."

As this is clearly a positive sentence, shouldn`t it be more like:

"I've already said what I think the difference is, when an ing-verb follows."

IGO
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  • They seem to stress different things - what the speaker thought in the first case, vs what the difference was thought to be, in the second. The overall meaning is pretty much the same in both cases, though. – Lawrence Apr 11 '16 at 23:33
  • I thought you're never supposed to use that word order in questions. For example, in the sentence like this: "I want to know what the weather is" I don't think I could change the word order and write "I want to know what is the weather" – IGO Apr 11 '16 at 23:42
  • That's right. However, the sentence you highlighted in bold in your question has a slightly more complex pattern. The alternative you proposed at the end of your question is perhaps more common, but the form in bold is also idiomatic (with stressed I and unstressed is the difference, and a hint of a pause before when). This might be more idiomatic in BrE than AmE, though. – Lawrence Apr 12 '16 at 00:29

1 Answers1

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I've already said what I think the difference is, when an ing-verb follows. (correct)

Affirmative: John is here.

Interrogative: Is John here?

An affirmative statement has affirmative syntax. The above example is not a question.

Note: A question has one question form, not two. For example:

What is the difference?

Can you tell me what the difference is?

(Can you tell me? is interrogative syntax, followed by affirmative syntax.)

Can you tell me what the difference is between apples and oranges?

Cathy Gartaganis
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