[Grammar] Do & does Vs Are, Is & Am

[Jadoon 84]

I am really confused with the usage of Do & Does and Are & Is in asking questions. Like

1, Are England ready for Australia? (Cricket match) I read it in newspaper but as far as I have learned Are, Is & Am are used in present continuous tense i.e. They are playing cricket. But in the above sentence there is no present participle
yet they used "Are" as helping verb. I think the sentence should have been as follows
2, Do England ready for Australia? (because do, does are used in present simple i.e. Do you play cricket?

Question: In reference to the above sentence how will I come to know to use Are, Is and Do, Does? Using Are, Is require present participle but there is no present participle in sentence # 01.

 

[5jj]

1, Are England ready for Australia? (Cricket match) I read it in a newspaper but as far as I have learned Are, Is & Am are used in present continuous tense i.e. They are playing cricket. But in the above sentence there is no present participle yet they used "Are" as helping verb.

No they didn't 'Are' is used as a full verb in that sentence.

I think the sentence should have been as follows:
2, Do England ready for Australia? (because do, does are used in present simple i.e. Do you play cricket?

DO is used as an auxiliary verb to construct the interrogative, negative and emphatic forms of almost all full verbs. There is no full verb in your sentence, which is not correct English.

 

[charliedeut]

I am really confused with the usage of Do & Does and Are & Is in asking questions. Like

1, Are England ready for Australia? (Cricket match) I read it in newspaper but as far as I have learned Are, Is & Am are used in present continuous tense i.e. They are playing cricket. But in the above sentence there is no present participle
yet they used "Are" as helping verb.

Hi Jadoon,

In the sentence there is no present participle because the sentence has been shortened (it was probably the Headline). It means "Are [the players of] England ready for [the game against] Australia?" So the sentence is in the simple present tense, not in the present continuous, which would require the present participle.

Greetings,

charliedeut

 

[5jj]

In the sentence there is no present participle because the sentence has been shortened (it was probably the Headline). It means "Are (the players of) England ready for [the game against] Australia?"

The sentence has not been shortened. It is a natural, full English sentence.

So the sentence is in the simple present tense, not in the present continuous, which would require the present participle.

It is the present simple because that is the appropriate tense.

 

[charliedeut]

1, Are England ready for Australia?

Also, note that, in cases like this, "Is England ready for Australia?" would also be correct, if you consider the team as a unit rather than as a group of players.

Greetings,

charliedeut

 

[Jadoon 84]

Attention 5jj

Please explain the first phase of your answer in detail.

Are England ready for Australia? They have used 'Are" as helping verb to construct interrogation.
while we have learned that Are, Is and am are used with present participle i.e. Are you going to school? There is no present participle in the sentence.

Other sentences may be
1, Are you ready for test?
2, Is he a doctor?
There is no present participle but there is Are and Is in the both sentences.

 

[charliedeut]

The sentence has not been shortened. It is a natural, full English sentence. It is the present simple because that is the appropriate tense.

Hi Jed,

I didn't want to imply that it was wrong at all. I just tried to look for a longer context/sentence so that the explanation was clearer to the OP. Shorter sentences sometimes pose a problem for us foreigners, and a few extra words usually do the trick.

Thanks for the corrections anyway :up:

Greetings,

charliedeut

 

[TheParser]

NOT A TEACHER


Hello, Jadoon:

May I add my two bits to 5jj's and Charliedeut's excellent answers?

My teachers told me that sometimes it helps to rearrange the words of a question. In other words, mentally put

the words in "regular" order:

"England are ready for Australia."

Now do you see why no -ing is necessary?

 

[charliedeut]

Is England ready for Australia?

Hi Parser,

See post #5, I guess irrespective of the variant/accent/dialect

 

[5jj]

In British English, Both 'is' and 'are' are possible in ' - England ready for the test?'

 

[SoothingDave]

And in AmE, "is" would be used. We consider collective nouns as singular. Congress is holding a vote today. Our baseball team actually has a winning record.

 

[Barb_D]

while we have learned that Are, Is and am are used with present participle i.e. Are you going to school?

If you are trying to choose whether to use "to do" or "to be" when forming a question, then this is a useful rule. Partciple means use "to be" (is/are) and not "to do" (i.e., "Do you going to school?" is not correct.)

However, that does not mean that using "to be" REQUIRES the use of a particple, and using the partiple would be wrong (in many cases) where "to be" is the main verb. "Are you happy?" Not "Are you being happy?"?