I have this (incorrect) sentence: “How many plays has William Shakespeare written?”. How does it need to be corrected and why exactly:
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How many plays did William Shakespeare write?
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How many plays William Shakespeare wrote?
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How many plays wrote William Shakespeare?
Best Answer
Unlike the other European languages I know, the present perfect is not the most common tense to use in English to describe past actions or states. It is used in special circumstances. For a brief introduction to a subtle issue in English grammar, see
https://www.perfect-english-grammar.com/present-perfect-or-past-simple.html#:~:text=What%27s%20the%20difference%3F%20Present%20Perfect%20and%20Past%20Simple,week%2C%20la%20...%20%201%20more%20rows%20
This is not one of the special cases where the present perfect is appropriate.
In English, we normally form questions using an auxiliary verb followed by the subject and ending with the bare infinitive of the meaningful verb.
If the question is about the past and in the active voice, the auxiliary verb is “did.”
This is an inversion of normal word order.
If, however, we introduce a question with “how many,” we specify how many of what before dealing with the inverted verb and subject.
Therefore the first option is correct.
WARNING Questions where some form of “be” is the operative verb do not use “did” as an auxiliary to indicate a question about the past.