The English
interrogative word
An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', ''who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in English most o ...
s (also known as "''wh'' words" or "''wh'' forms") are
word
A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...
s in
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
with a central role in forming
interrogative
An interrogative clause is a clause whose form is typically associated with question-like meanings. For instance, the English sentence "Is Hannah sick?" has interrogative syntax which distinguishes it from its declarative counterpart "Hannah is ...
phrase
In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
s and
clause
In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with ...
s and in asking
question
A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammar, grammatical forms typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are inte ...
s. The main members associated with
open-ended question
An open-ended question is a question that cannot be answered with a "yes" or "no" response, or with a static response. Open-ended questions are phrased as a statement which requires a longer response. The response can be compared to information tha ...
s are ''how'', ''what'', ''when'', ''where'', ''which'', ''
who
Who or WHO may refer to:
* Who (pronoun), an interrogative or relative pronoun
* Who?, one of the Five Ws in journalism
* World Health Organization
Arts and entertainment Fictional characters
* Who, a creature in the Dr. Seuss book ''Horton Hear ...
'', ''whom'', ''whose'', and ''why'', all of which also have ''-ever'' forms (e.g., ''whatever''). Those associated with
closed-ended question
A closed-ended question refers to any question for which a researcher provides research participants with options from which to choose a response. Closed-ended questions are sometimes phrased as a statement which requires a response.
A closed-en ...
s are ''whether'' and ''if''.
The main role of these words is to mark a clause as interrogative. For example, ''How did you do it?'' is marked as an interrogative clause by the presence of ''how'', and in ''I wonder whether it's true'', ''whether'' marks the
subordinate clause
A subordinate clause, dependent clause, subclause, or embedded clause is a clause that is embedded within a complex sentence. For instance, in the English sentence "I know that Bette is a dolphin", the clause "that Bette is a dolphin" occurs as t ...
''whether it's true'' as interrogative.
Extended membership
Along with the words listed above, the members include some older or archaic words, including ''whence'', ''whither'', and other compound
prepositions
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
such as ''whereby'', ''wherein'', formed from one of the central interrogative words plus a preposition.
Semantics
Semantically
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
speaking, when used in a main clause, the interrogative words do not
refer
Refer or referral may refer to:
*Reference, a relation of designation or linking between objects
**Word-sense disambiguation, when a single term may refer to multiple meanings
*Referral marketing, to personally recommend, endorse, and pass a perso ...
but rather question. For example, ''who'' in ''Who likes sewage?'' does not pick out a specific individual in the world, but rather asks about the identity of such an individual, should they exist. In a subordinate clause, though, this may be different. For example, ''how'' in ''I know how to do it'',
denotes a particular way of doing it rather than asking about a way.
Individual words
* ''What'' is used to ask about or denote the identity of almost anything including situations (''What's happening''), objects (''What is that thing?''), and places (''What city?''). It cannot typically be used for persons, especially on its own. For example, ''What is behind that door?'' cannot be used to ask about a person unless it is not clear that it is a person. However, it may be used for a person's role (''What is he?''), and it can be combined with a noun denoting a person (''What person would do that?'' or ''What child doesn't love their parents?'').
* ''Who'' (with its other forms ''whom'' and ''whose'') is limited to asking about the identity of
person
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, ...
s or denoting them.
* ''Which'' is used to ask about or denote one or more members from a set.
* ''Where'' is used to ask about or denote locations.
* ''When'' is used to ask about or denote times.
* ''How'' is used to ask about or denote manner, dispositions, and evaluations.
* ''Why'' is used to ask about or denote reasons, causes, and explanations.
* ''Whence'' and ''whither'' (both distinctly archaic) refer to a place (broadly conceived) with respectively a "from" and a "to" meaning.
All of the words above may be used to ask for any number of answers. For example, ''Who comes on Thursday?'' can be asked whether the expected response is
singular or plural. (For
agreement Agreement may refer to:
Agreements between people and organizations
* Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law
* Trade agreement, between countries
* Consensus, a decision-making process
* Contract, enforceable in a court of law
** Meeting o ...
purposes, though, interrogative words are singular.)
In contrast, ''whether'' and ''if'', like other subordinators, have no semantic value, and simply mark the clause as interrogative.
Lexical categories and syntactic functions
Although the main role of interrogative words is to mark a clause as interrogative, each also has a
syntactic function
In linguistics, grammatical relations (also called grammatical functions, grammatical roles, or syntactic functions) are functional relationships between constituents in a clause. The standard examples of grammatical functions from traditional gra ...
when used in a phrase with one or more dependents, just as any word would. For example, in ''What time works for you?'', ''what'' functions as a
determiner
A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner m ...
within the noun phrase (and interrogative phrase) ''what time''; while in ''Who arrived?'', ''who'' (itself a noun phrase and interrogative phrase, although it lacks dependents) functions as the
subject
Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to:
Philosophy
*''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing
**Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective cons ...
.
Different words have different functions depending on their
lexical category
In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are ass ...
. For example, while a pronoun like ''who'' may typically function as a subject, a
preposition
Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...
like ''when'' rarely does so. Moreover, the form of the word may constrain its function. ''Whose'' (the
genitive
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
form of ''who''), for instance, can function as a determiner, while ''who'' and ''whom'' cannot.
Individual words
* ''Who'' (together with its forms ''whom'' and ''whose'') is a pronoun.
* ''What'' is a
pronoun
In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase.
Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...
or determiner.
* ''Which'' is a pronoun or determiner.
* ''Where'' is a preposition.
* ''When'' is a preposition.
* ''How'' is usually an
adverb An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering ...
(e.g., ''How rusty is it?'')
but sometimes an
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Tra ...
(e.g., ''How was the movie?'').
* ''Why'' is an adverb.
* ''Whether'' and ''if'' are subordinators.
Syntax
Interrogative words typically appear initially in interrogative clauses. It is possible, however, for adjuncts to be moved in front (''Tomorrow where are you going?'') and interrogative words may even appear elsewhere, as in ''You did what?'' or ''And you put this where?'' When there are two or more interrogative phrases in a single clause, only one may move to the front of the clause, as in ''Who said to do what?'' or ''What did who say to do?'' (and neither *''Who what said to do?'' nor *''What who said to do?'').
Interrogative words may also be used on their own. ''What?'' for example, is often used to signal that the speaker didn't hear or understand what was said.
Etymology
Ultimately, the English interrogative words (those beginning with ''
wh'' in addition to the word ''how''), derive from the
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. Its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-European languages. No direct record of Proto-Indo-E ...
root
''kwo-'' or ''kwi'',
the former of which was reflected in
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic branc ...
as ''χ
wa-'' or ''kh
wa-'', due to
Grimm's law
Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. First systematically put forward by Jacob Grim ...
.
These underwent further sound changes and spelling changes, notably
''wh''-cluster reductions, resulting in the initial sound being either /w/ (in most dialects) or /h/ (''how, who'') and the initial spelling being either ''wh'' or ''h'' (''how''). This was the result of two sound changes – /hw/ > /h/ before /uː/ (''how, who'') and /hw/ > /w/ otherwise – and the spelling change from ''hw'' to ''wh'' in Middle English. The unusual pronunciation versus spelling of ''who'' is because the vowel was formerly /aː/, and thus it did not undergo the sound change in Old English, but in Middle English (following spelling change) the vowel changed to /uː/ and it followed the same sound change as ''how'' before it, but with the Middle English spelling unchanged.
In ''how'' (Old English ''hū'', from Proto-Germanic ''χ
wō''), the ''w'' merged into the lave of the word, as it did in Old Frisian ''hū, hō'' (Dutch ''hoe'' "how"), but it can still be seen in Old Saxon ''hwō'', Old High German ''hwuo'' (German ''wie'' "how"). In English, the gradual change of voiceless stops into voiceless fricatives (phase 1 of
Grimm's law
Grimm's law (also known as the First Germanic Sound Shift) is a set of sound laws describing the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stop consonants as they developed in Proto-Germanic in the 1st millennium BC. First systematically put forward by Jacob Grim ...
) during the development of
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...
is responsible for "wh-" of interrogatives. Although some varieties of
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
and various
Scottish
Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including:
*Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland
*Scottish English
*Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...
dialects still preserve the original sound (i.e.
rather than
, most have only the
The words ''who'', ''whom'', ''whose'', ''what'' and ''why'', can all be considered to come from a single
Old English
Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...
word ''hwā'', reflecting its masculine and feminine nominative (''hwā''), dative (''hwām''), genitive (''hwæs''), neuter nominative and accusative (''hwæt''), and instrumental (masculine and neuter singular) (''hwȳ'', later ''hwī'') respectively.
Other interrogative words, such as ''which'', ''how'', ''where'', ''whence'', or ''whither'',
derive either from compounds (''which'' coming from a compound of ''hwā''
hat, whoand ''līc''
ike
Ike or IKE may refer to:
People
* Ike (given name), a list of people with the name or nickname
* Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969), Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II and President of the United States Surname
...
,
or other words from the same root (''how'' deriving from ''hū'').
Interrogative vs relative words
There is significant overlap between the English interrogative words and the
English relative words, but the relative words ''that'' and ''while'' are not interrogative words, and, in
Standard English
In an English-speaking country, Standard English (SE) is the variety of English that has undergone substantial regularisation and is associated with formal schooling, language assessment, and official print publications, such as public service a ...
, ''what'' and ''how'' are mostly excluded from the relative words.
Most or all of the archaic interrogative words are also relative words.
Although as an interrogative word, ''whose'' is limited to denoting persons, relative ''whose'' may denote non-persons, as in ''a book whose cover is missing''.
Interrogative versus echo-question words
An inaudible, incomprehensible, or implausible word can be questioned with either of the
echo-question words, ''what'' or ''who'':
*''We'll have to extrapolate for the next three years.'' / ''We'll have to what for the next three years?''
*''Previous attachés included Robin Vane-Tempest-Stewart.'' / ''Robin vain who?''
Echo-question words are not interrogative words. In the first example, ''what'' is a verb; in the second, ''who'' is not phrase-initial. Neither is possible for interrogative ''what'' or ''who''.
Interrogative versus exclamative words
There are only two English exclamative words, ''what'' and ''how''.
* ''What a lovely day!''
* ''How much snow has fallen!''
* ''How nice it is to finally meet you!''
They are not interrogative words. They appear in exclamative phrases on their own or in exclamative clauses, and, as with interrogatives, participate in
unbounded dependency constructions.
Notes
References
{{Reflist
English words
English grammar
Syntax
Semantics