The words in capital letters have the emphatic stress. Choose the option to which the given sentence relates. The car CRUSHED him.

Analyze the question

In emphatic stress questions, the capitalized word shows the new or contrasting information in the sentence. The sentence must be the answer to the question. Here the emphasized word is CRUSHED, so the question should be about the action (crushed vs. something else).

Explain the concept

Emphatic stress falls on the word that answers or corrects the question. For example:

• "The car crushed HIM" answers "Who did the car crush?"
• "The CAR crushed him" answers "What crushed him?"
• "The car CRUSHED him" answers a question about what the car did to him, i.e. whether it did something else (like injure) rather than crush.

Check each option

• A. Who did the car crush? This would stress HIM. ✗
• B. Did a car crush him? This would stress CAR (or "a car" versus something else). ✗
• C. What crushed him? This would stress CAR. ✗
• D. Did the car injure him? The question suggests "injure", and the reply "The car CRUSHED him" corrects or intensifies it, putting the stress on the verb. ✓

Answer

The stress on CRUSHED responds to a question about the action, which is option D. The reply says "No, it did more than injure him: it crushed him."

Tip: In emphatic stress questions, find the capitalized word, then pick the option whose different or questioned word sits in that same position. Stress on the subject matches "who/what" questions, stress on the verb matches questions about the action, and stress on the object matches "whom/what" questions.