why do we structure sentences like “i didn’t know what i was supposed to do” as compared to “i didn’t know what was i supposed to do”

Question

i’m back with another grammar question!!! i know how to switch the words but cant pinpoint why and what the criteria is to make that switch?

In: 0

Answer 1

We tend to phrase it like the latter for a question. “What was I supposed to do?” The “what” there is the object, “I” is the subject, and “do” is the verb. It’s a complete sentence. But saying “What I was supposed to do” is not a complete sentence because the “I was supposed to do” all describes the “what” but there’s no verb.

That said, the sentence “I didn’t know what I was supposed to do” is correct because “what I was supposed to do” is all the object. If you rearranged it into “I didn’t know what was I supposed to do” it just doesn’t make a lot of sense. We might understand it anyway but grammatically it’s a lot messier.

Answer 2

For one thing, in English, ‘what was I supposed to do’ is a question, but ‘what I was supposed to do ‘ is a statement.