It is correct to say "What does X mean?"
Where X is the subject.
See the basic word order in the second point on this link:
<a href="http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/grammar/frage4.htm">http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/grammar/frage4.htm</a>;
The subject is in the third column, in your case it is "to go"
But if X is long, or the sentence is unclear, you can re-word it like this:
"What is the meaning of X?"
For example "What is the meaning of 'It's raining cats and dogs'?"
So these two are correct:
What does "to go" mean?
What is the meaning of "to go"?
I hope this helps.
Hey, Marco. How are you, man?
I´m not the best person to answer your questions, since i 'm not a native, but, if we observe, the both senteces have the same structute.
In "What does 'to go' mean?" we have:
1) What - interrogative pronoum;
2) does - auxiliar verb, that indicates a questions in this case, since it appears antecipated in relation to the subject;
3) "to go" - the subject;
4) mean - main verb.
This is the tradicional form to ask a question. All elements are in the direct order.
In the same manner, when you say "What does it mean "to go", we have the same direct order, but:
1) What - interrogative pronoum;
2) does - auxiliar verb, that indicates a questions in this case, since it appears antecipated in relation to the subject;
3) IT - look that "it" is the new subject in direct order, but it don't tell us nothing about we want to know. If we just ask "What does it mean?", the listener will not be able to understand what we are really talking about, because "it" alone don´t have any meaning. So it's necessary to present what "it" really means and we do that at the end of the sentence;
4) mean - main verb;
5) "to"go - the real subject;
Realize that, in a certain context, you could say just "What does it mean?" with no loss of meaning. Look:
A: Sorry, but i have to go.
B: What does it mean? (It = to go)
So, finally answering your doubt, it´s just an stylistic option say one way or another.
Great question! The two wordings are *slightly* different:
1. What does "to go" mean? - asks what the phrase "to go" means. This technically needs the quotation marks to be correct. I think this is most often the structure you would want to use.
You could use this structure to ask about any word, phrase, etc. for instance, What does "boat" mean, What does "take out the trash" mean, etc.
Alan's explanation of this is completely correct.
2. What does it mean to go? - this structure is asking just about the meaning of the verb. A small nuance: we would often use this structure to ask philosophical questions, for instance, What does it mean to be alive? But you can use it to ask the meaning of any verb.
Alan's explanation is just slightly incorrect here: "to go" in this case is not the subject. "To" is actually introducing a verbal clause in this case, and it would not be correct to put other parts of speech into this structure. For instance, What does it mean cookie? is not a correct sentence.
Sorry this post got so long. I hope it is clear and helpful! In short:
Both ways are fine. Personally, I think the first way is what you would use more often. :)
What does "to go" mean or What does it mean "to go"?
Hi! I'm a little confused. I've heard people say "What does it mean "to go" (for example)?" I once wrote "What does to go mean?" and the sentence was corrected into "What does it mean to go?".
Another time I wrote "What does it mean to go?" and the sentence was corrected into "What does to go mean?"
<em>The quotes strongly imply that you are asking about the meaning of the phrase in quotes. Without the quotes you might be asking about the meaning of the action itself.</em>
<em>Let's rewrite your example:</em>
<em>1. What does "to x" mean?</em>
<em>2. What does it mean "to x"?</em>
<em>First correct, second incorrect.</em>
<em>You could express it (2) as: What does it mean, to x? However that is artificial, and it should probably be written: What will it mean if I x?</em>
How should (or would?) I say this?
Thank you
Marco
