Hi,
I want to form an indirect question from this direct question:
"Where can I find a good shopping mall?"
I want to form the indirect questions with "Can you tell me..."
If the indirect question is "Can you tell me where I can find a good shopping mall," why does "I"go before "can?"
park green 757If the indirect question is "Can you tell me where I can find a good shopping mall,"
No. That whole group of words is not the indirect question. An indirect question is always only a part of a sentence. The indirect question is underlined below:
Can you tell me where I can find a good shopping mall?
(The direct question is the whole sentence.)
park green 757why does "I" go before "can"?
It's a rule of English. Only direct questions (and a few other constructions) feature subject-verb inversion. Indirect questions do not participate in subject-verb inversion.
See Question about question for a lot more details on indirect questions (also called embedded questions).
CJ
Thank you.