Who ___________ was coming to see us this evening? A. you said B. did you say C. did you say that D. had you said

GATE 2014 · General Aptitude · Tenses · medium

Answer: B. did you say

1. Understand the sentence structure: The sentence 'Who ___ was coming to see us this evening?' asks which person the listener mentioned. It is a wh-question with an embedded reported clause ('was coming to see us').
2. Apply do-support for wh-questions in past tense: Since 'say' has no auxiliary in the affirmative ('you said'), we add 'did' and use the base form: 'did you say'. Result: 'Who did you say was coming?' — this is correct English.
3. Eliminate other options: A. 'you said' — statement word order, not a question. C. 'did you say that' — 'that' creates an incomplete clause and is ungrammatical here. D. 'had you said' — past perfect implies a conditional or hypothetical context, not simple reported speech.