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Kindly, consider the following two sentences:

1) In a situation that a manager is telling a person who is applying for the job: "You have to prove that you are the right person for the job." What is the correct question tag for this statement, is it: can you, can't you, could you or couldn't you?

2) Nobody could sleep. What is the correct question tag, is it: could they or couldn't they?

Thanks in advance.

2 Answers 2

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A positive statement takes a negative tag, and a negative statement takes a positive tag. 

You [do] have to prove that you are the right person for the job, don't you? 
You don't have to prove that you are the right person for the job, do you? 

However, in the situation you describe, a tag question doesn't seem appropriate.  A simple statement and an entirely separate follow-up question make more sense here: 

You have to prove that you are the right person for the job.  Can you? 

 

The statement's negation isn't always directly applied to the verb.  The "nobody" is negative enough to allow a positive tag:

Nobody could sleep, could they? 
Everybody could sleep, couldn't they? 

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Question tags have a specific format. For instance, the first example (manager) of yours cannot have one. Instead, the proper sentence for a tag would be...

You are the right person for the job, aren't you?

But still, if you want to add a tag, it could be like -

You have to prove that you are the right person for the job, will you?

However, the second sentence can be...

Nobody could sleep, could anyone/body?

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    This is wrong, in any English I am familiar with (it might perhaps be different in Indian English). "You have to prove that you are the right person for the job, don't you?" is both grammatical and idiomatic. "Will you" is used for the question tag only when the main auxiliary is "will" (or "'ll"). And I would never use "anyone/body" in a tag question: it would be "could they?"
    – Colin Fine
    Sep 12, 2018 at 20:27

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