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Recently I have seen a sentence in a chat room. Which is as below:

  • Are you saying I've answered your that question by ....

Is the above sentence right?

If yes, Please explain the construction of such sentences with example.

Source:

And are you saying I've answered your that question by chat.stackexchange.com/… message.

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    It looks like the author may have switched their mind mid sentence from "answered your question" to "answered that question". Would need rest of the sentence to figure it out.
    – Peter
    Commented Jan 18, 2017 at 8:38
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    I agree with @Peter. Sounds like a typo.
    – Teacher KSHuang
    Commented Jan 18, 2017 at 8:41
  • @Peter This may also be possible : If there are many questions, and he is pointing it by using that. Shall I post the message here?
    – Nog Shine
    Commented Jan 18, 2017 at 8:41
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    Or it could be an ungrammatical attempt to say something like "answered that question of yours"?
    – Warren Ham
    Commented Jan 18, 2017 at 8:50
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    @Sinister It would be better if you edited your question instead of putting additions in a comment. Just click on "edit" next to "share", under the tag labels.
    – Peter
    Commented Jan 18, 2017 at 9:13

2 Answers 2

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The Original example, is a typo, not a grammar mistake!

However let's have a look at the sentence:

I have answered your that question.

The noun phrase your that question is ungrammatical. Noun phrases usually come in two sections, they have a Head, and they have a Determiner. In the phrase the big dog the word the is the Determiner and the Head is big dog.

The words that and your are both determinatives. In English we can only have one determinative in a central Determiner function. If we have two the phrase will be ungrammatical:

  • *the my dog
  • *my the dog
  • *no my books
  • *your that question

All of these are ungrammatical for this reason.

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Peter is right. It looks as if that person hesitated choosing a determiner for his sentence. If you need to combine both of them, the correct choice would be that question of yours.

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