A question is an
utterance
In spoken language analysis, an utterance is a continuous piece of speech, often beginning and ending with a clear pause. In the case of oral languages, it is generally, but not always, bounded by silence. Utterances do not exist in written langu ...
which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from
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 ...
s, which are the
grammatical
In linguistics, grammaticality is determined by the conformity to language usage as derived by the grammar of a particular variety (linguistics), speech variety. The notion of grammaticality rose alongside the theory of generative grammar, the go ...
forms typically used to express them.
Rhetorical question
A rhetorical question is one for which the questioner does not expect a direct answer: in many cases it may be intended to start a discourse, or as a means of displaying or emphasize the speaker's or author's opinion on a topic.
A common example ...
s, for instance, are interrogative in form but may not be considered
bona fide
In human interactions, good faith ( la, bona fides) is a sincere intention to be fair, open, and honest, regardless of the outcome of the interaction. Some Latin phrases have lost their literal meaning over centuries, but that is not the case ...
questions, as they are not expected to be answered.
Questions come in a number of varieties. ''
Polar question
Polar may refer to:
Geography
Polar may refer to:
* Geographical pole, either of two fixed points on the surface of a rotating body or planet, at 90 degrees from the equator, based on the axis around which a body rotates
*Polar climate, the cli ...
s'' are those such as the
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 ...
example "Is this a polar question?", which can be answered with "yes" or "no". ''Alternative questions'' such as "Is this a polar question, or an alternative question?" present a list of possibilities to choose from. ''
Open questions'' such as "What kind of question is this?" allow many possible resolutions.
Questions are widely studied in
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
and
philosophy of language
In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, ...
. In the subfield of
pragmatics
In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the int ...
, questions are regarded as
illocutionary act The concept of illocutionary acts was introduced into linguistics by the philosopher J. L. Austin in his investigation of the various aspects of speech acts. In his framework, ''locution'' is what was said and meant, ''illocution'' is what was done, ...
s which raise an issue to be resolved in
discourse
Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. ...
. In approaches to
formal semantics such as
alternative semantics Alternative semantics (or Hamblin semantics) is a framework in formal semantics and logic. In alternative semantics, expressions denote ''alternative sets'', understood as sets of objects of the same semantic type. For instance, while the word "Le ...
or
inquisitive semantics
Inquisitive semantics is a framework in logic and natural language semantics. In inquisitive semantics, the semantic content of a sentence captures both the information that the sentence conveys and the issue that it raises. The framework provides ...
, questions are regarded as the
denotation
In linguistics and philosophy, the denotation of an expression is its literal meaning. For instance, the English word "warm" denotes the property of being warm. Denotation is contrasted with other aspects of meaning including connotation. For inst ...
s of interrogatives, and are typically identified as
set
Set, The Set, SET or SETS may refer to:
Science, technology, and mathematics Mathematics
*Set (mathematics), a collection of elements
*Category of sets, the category whose objects and morphisms are sets and total functions, respectively
Electro ...
s of the
proposition
In logic and linguistics, a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence. In philosophy, " meaning" is understood to be a non-linguistic entity which is shared by all sentences with the same meaning. Equivalently, a proposition is the no ...
s which answer them.
Definitions
Linguistically, a question may be defined on three levels.
At the level of
semantics
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
Philosophy (f ...
, a question is defined by its ability to establish a set of logically possible answers.
[Huddleston, Rodney, and Geoffrey K. Pullum. (2002) '']The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language
''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (''CGEL'') is a descriptive grammar of the English language. Its primary authors are Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum. Huddleston was the only author to work on every chapter. It was publ ...
.'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. .
At the level of
pragmatics
In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the int ...
, a question is an
illocutionary The concept of illocutionary acts was introduced into linguistics by the philosopher J. L. Austin in his investigation of the various aspects of speech acts. In his framework, ''locution'' is what was said and meant, ''illocution'' is what was done, ...
category of speech act which seeks to obtain information from the addressee.
At the level of
syntax
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
, the
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 ...
is a type of clause which is characteristically associated with questions, and defined by certain grammatical rules (such as
subject–auxiliary inversion
Subject–auxiliary inversion (SAI; also called subject–operator inversion) is a frequently occurring type of inversion in English, whereby a finite auxiliary verb – taken here to include finite forms of the copula ''be'' – appears to "inve ...
in English) which vary by language.
Some authors conflate these definitions. While prototypical questions (such as "What is your name?") will satisfy all three definitions, their overlap is not complete. For example "I would like to know your name." satisfies the pragmatic definition, but not the semantic or syntactic ones. Such mismatches of form and function are called
indirect speech acts
In the philosophy of language and linguistics, speech act is something expressed by an individual that not only presents information but performs an action as well. For example, the phrase "I would like the kimchi; could you please pass it to me?" ...
.
Uses
The principal use of questions is to elicit information from the person being addressed by indicating the information which the speaker (or writer) desires.
A slight variant is the
display question
A display question (also called ''known-information question'') is a type of question requiring the other party to demonstrate their knowledge on a subject matter when the questioner already knows the answer. They are contrasted with referential qu ...
, where the addressee is asked to produce information which is already known to the speaker. For example, a teacher or game show host might ask "What is the capital of Australia?" to test the knowledge of a student or contestant.
A direction question is one that seeks an instruction rather than factual information. It differs from a typical ("information") question in that the characteristic response is a directive rather than a declarative statement.
For example:
:A: When should I open your gift?
:B: Open it now.
Questions may also be used as the basis for a number of indirect speech acts. For example, the
imperative sentence
The imperative mood is a grammatical mood that forms a command or request.
The imperative mood is used to demand or require that an action be performed. It is usually found only in the present tense, second person. To form the imperative mood, ...
"Pass the salt." can be reformulated (somewhat more politely) as:
:Would you pass the salt?
Which has the form of an interrogative, but the illocutionary force of a directive.
The term
rhetorical question
A rhetorical question is one for which the questioner does not expect a direct answer: in many cases it may be intended to start a discourse, or as a means of displaying or emphasize the speaker's or author's opinion on a topic.
A common example ...
may be colloquially applied to a number of uses of questions where the speaker does not seek or expect an answer (perhaps because the answer is implied or obvious), such as:
:Has he lost his mind?
:Why have I brought you all here? Let me explain...
:They're closed? But the website said it was open until 10 o'clock.
Loaded question
A loaded question is a form of complex question that contains a controversial assumption (e.g., a presumption of guilt).
Such questions may be used as a rhetorical tool: the question attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the qu ...
s (a special case of
complex questions), such as "Have you stopped beating your wife?" may be used as a joke or to embarrass an audience, because any answer a person could give would imply more information than he was willing to affirm.
Semantic classification
The main semantic classification of questions is according to the set of logically possible answers that they admit. An open question, such as "What is your name?", allows indefinitely many possible answers. A closed question admits a finite number of possible answers. Closed questions may be further subdivided into yes–no questions (such as "Are you hungry?") and alternative questions (such as "Do you want jam or marmalade?").
The distinction between these classes tends to be grammaticalized. In English, open and closed
interrogatives
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 ...
are distinct clause types characteristically associated with open and closed questions, respectively.
Yes–no questions
A ''yes–no question'' (also called a ''polar question'',
or ''general question''
[William Chisholm, Louis T. Milic, John A.C. Greppin. Interrogativity. – John Benjamins Publishing, 1982.]) asks whether some statement is true. They can in principle be answered by a
"yes" or "no" (or similar words or expressions in other languages). Examples include "Do you take sugar?", "Should they be believed?" and "Am I the loneliest person in the world?"
Alternative questions
An ''alternative question'' presents two or more discrete choices as possible answers in an assumption that only one of them is true. For example:
:Are you supporting England, Ireland or Wales?
The canonical expected answer to such a question would be either "England", "Ireland", or "Wales". Such an alternative question
presupposes
In the branch of linguistics known as pragmatics, a presupposition (or PSP) is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include ...
that the addressee supports one of these three teams. The addressee may
cancel this presupposition with an answer like "None of them".
In English, alternative questions are not syntactically distinguished from yes–no questions. Depending on context, the same question may have either interpretation:
*Do these muffins have butter or margarine?
'm on a low fat diet.*Do these muffins have butter or margarine?
saw that the recipe said you could use either.In speech, these are distinguishable by intonation.
Open questions
An ''open question'' (also called a ''variable question'',
''non-polar question'', or ''special question''
) admits indefinitely many possible answers. For example:
:Where should we go for lunch?
In English, these are typically embodied in a closed interrogative clause, which uses an
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 ...
such as ''when'', ''who'', or ''what''. These are also called ''wh''-words, and for this reason open questions may also be called ''wh''-questions.
Question formation
Questions may be marked by some combination of word order,
morphology
Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to:
Disciplines
* Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts
* Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...
, interrogative words, and
intonation. Where languages have one or more
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 ...
type characteristically used to form questions, they are called
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 ...
clauses. Open and closed questions are generally distinguished grammatically, with the former identified by the use of
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.
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 ...
,
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
,
French and various other (mostly European) languages, both forms of interrogative are subject to an
inversion
Inversion or inversions may refer to:
Arts
* , a French gay magazine (1924/1925)
* ''Inversion'' (artwork), a 2005 temporary sculpture in Houston, Texas
* Inversion (music), a term with various meanings in music theory and musical set theory
* ...
of word order between verb and subject. In English, the inversion
is limited to auxiliary verbs, which sometimes necessitates
the addition of the auxiliary ''do'', as in:
::a. Sam reads the newspaper.
::b. Does Sam read the newspaper?
Open questions
Open questions are formed by the use of
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 such as, in English, ''when'', ''what'', or ''which''. These stand in as variables representing the unknown information being sought. They may also combine with other words to form interrogative phrases, such as ''which shoes'' in:
:Which shoes should I wear to the party?
In many languages, including English and most other European languages, the interrogative phrase must (with certain exceptions such as
echo questions
An echo question is a question that seeks to confirm or clarify another speaker's utterance (the ''stimulus''), by repeating it back in some form. For example:
A: I'm moving to Greenland.
B: You're moving ''where''??
In English, echo questions ...
) appear at the beginning of the sentence, a phenomenon known as
wh-fronting
In linguistics, wh-movement (also known as wh-fronting, wh-extraction, or wh-raising) is the formation of syntactic dependencies involving interrogative words. An example in English is the dependency formed between ''what'' and the object position ...
. In other languages, the interrogative appears in the same position as it would in a corresponding declarative sentence (''in situ'').
A question may include multiple variables as in:
:Whose gifts are in which boxes?
Polar questions
Different languages may use different mechanisms to distinguish polar ("yes-no") questions from declarative statements (in addition to the
question mark
The question mark (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation mark that indicates an interrogative clause or phrase in many languages.
History
In the fifth century, Syriac Bible manuscripts used ques ...
). English is one of a small number of languages which use word order. Another example is French:
Cross-linguistically, the most common method of marking a polar question is with an
interrogative particle
An interrogative word or question word is a function word used to ask a question, such as ''what, which'', ''when'', ''where'', ''who (pronoun), who, whom, whose'', ''why'', ''whether'' and ''how''. They are sometimes called wh-words, because in ...
,
such as the
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
''ka'',
Mandarin
Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to:
Language
* Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country
** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China
** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
''ma'' and
Polish
Polish may refer to:
* Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe
* Polish language
* Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent
* Polish chicken
*Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...
''czy''.
Other languages use verbal morphology, such as the ''-n'' verbal postfix in the
Tunica language
The Tunica or Luhchi Yoroni (or Tonica, or less common form Yuron) language is a language isolate that was spoken in the Central and Lower Mississippi Valley in the United States by Native American Tunica peoples. There are no native speakers o ...
.
Of the languages examined in the
World Atlas of Language Structures
The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials. It was first published by Oxford University Press as a book with CD-ROM i ...
, only one,
Atatláhuca–San Miguel Mixtec
Atatláhuca–San Miguel Mixtec is a diverse Mixtec language of Oaxaca.
Dialects
Egland & BartholomewEgland & Bartholomew (1983) ''La Inteligibilidad Interdialectal en México'' found six dialects (with > ≈80% internal intelligibility) which h ...
, was found to have no distinction between declaratives and polar questions.
Intonation
Most languages have an intonational pattern which is characteristic of questions (often involving a raised pitch at the end, as in English).
In some languages, such as
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
, intonation is the sole distinction.
In some languages, such as English, or Russian, a
rising declarative In linguistics, a rising declarative is an utterance which has the syntactic form of a declarative but the rising intonation typically associated with polar interrogatives.
# ''Rising declarative:'' Justin Bieber wants to hang out ...
is a sentence which is syntactically declarative but is understood as a question by the use of a rising intonation. For example, "You're not using this?"
On the other hand, there are English dialects (Southern Californian English, New Zealand English) in which rising declaratives (the "
uptalk
The high rising terminal (HRT), also known as upspeak, uptalk, or high rising intonation (HRI) is a feature of some variants of English where declarative sentences can end with a rising pitch similar to that typically found in yes-or-no questions ...
") do not constitute questions. However it is established that in English
there is a distinction between ''assertive'' rising declaratives and ''inquisitive'' rising declaratives, distinguished by their
prosody.
Request for confirmation and speaker presupposition
Questions may be phrased as a request for confirmation for a statement the interrogator already believes to be true.
A
tag question is a polar question formed by the addition of an interrogative fragment (the "tag") to a (typically declarative) clause. For example:
:You're John,
:Let's have a drink,
:You remembered the eggs,
This form may incorporate speaker's
presupposition
In the branch of linguistics known as pragmatics, a presupposition (or PSP) is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include ...
when it constitutes a
complex question.
Consider a statement
:(A) Somebody killed the cat
and several questions related to it.
:(B) John killed the cat, did he? (tag question)
:(C) Was it John who killed the cat?
As compared with:
:(D) Who killed the cat?
Unlike (B), questions (C) and (D) incorporate a presupposition that somebody killed the cat.
Question (C) indicates speaker's commitment to the truth of the statement that somebody killed the cat, but no commitment as to whether John did it or didn't.
Stanley Peters
Stanley may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
Film and television
* ''Stanley'' (1972 film), an American horror film
* ''Stanley'' (1984 film), an Australian comedy
* ''Stanley'' (1999 film), an animated short
* ''Stanley'' (1956 TV series) ...
, "Speaker commitments: Presupposition", ''Proceedings of the Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference (SALT)'' 26: 1083–1098, 2016,
(download PDF)
Punctuation
In languages written in
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
,
Cyrillic
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...
or certain other scripts, a
question mark
The question mark (also known as interrogation point, query, or eroteme in journalism) is a punctuation mark that indicates an interrogative clause or phrase in many languages.
History
In the fifth century, Syriac Bible manuscripts used ques ...
at the end of a sentence identifies questions in writing. As with intonation, this feature is not restricted to sentences having the grammatical form of questions – it may also indicate a sentence's
pragmatic
Pragmatism is a philosophical movement.
Pragmatism or pragmatic may also refer to:
*Pragmaticism, Charles Sanders Peirce's post-1905 branch of philosophy
*Pragmatics, a subfield of linguistics and semiotics
*''Pragmatics'', an academic journal in ...
function.
In
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
an additional
inverted mark is placed at the beginning: ''¿Cómo está usted?'' "How are you?". An uncommon variant of the question mark is the
interrobang
The interrobang (), also known as the interabang (often represented by any of ?!, !?, ?!? or !?!), is an unconventional punctuation mark used in various written languages and intended to combine the functions of the question mark, or interro ...
(‽), which combines the function of the question mark and the
exclamation mark
The exclamation mark, , or exclamation point (American English), is a punctuation mark usually used after an interjection or exclamation to indicate strong feelings or to show emphasis. The exclamation mark often marks the end of a sentence, f ...
.
Responses and answers
The
Cambridge Grammar of the English Language
''The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' (''CGEL'') is a descriptive grammar of the English language. Its primary authors are Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum. Huddleston was the only author to work on every chapter. It was publi ...
distinguishes between an ''answer'' (being a member of the set of logically possible answers, as delineated in ) and a ''response'' (any statement made by the addressee in reply to the question).
For example, the following are all possible responses to the question "Is Alice ready to leave?"
i. (a) Yes.
(b) She's ready.
(c) No, she's not.
ii. (a) I don't know.
(b) Why do you ask?
(c) She might be.
iii.(a) She's still looking for her wallet.
(b) She wasn't expecting you before 5 o'clock.
(c) I'll let you know when she's ready.
Only the
responses are answers in the Cambridge sense. The responses in
iavoid committing to a ''yes'' or ''no'' answer. The responses in
iiall ''
implicate'' an answer of ''no'', but are not logically equivalent to ''no''. (For example, in
iib IIB or IIb may refer to:
* IIb, a diamond type
* IIb, a type of type II supernova
* Intergranular and Interphase Boundaries (IIB) in Materials, a series of triennial international conferences which started in Paris (France) in 1989
* International I ...
the respondent can cancel the implicature by adding a statement like: "Fortunately, she packed everything up early.")
Along similar lines, Belnap and Steel (1976) define the concept of a ''direct answer'':
A direct answer to a given question is a piece of language that completely, but just completely, answers the question...What is crucial is that it be effectively decidable whether a piece of language is a direct answer to a specific question... To each clear question there corresponds a set of statements which are ''directly'' responsive. ... A direct answer must provide an unarguably final resolution of the question.
Answering negative questions
"Negative questions" are interrogative sentences which contain negation in their phrasing, such as "Shouldn't you be working?" These can have different ways of expressing affirmation and denial from the standard form of question, and they can be confusing, since it is sometimes unclear whether the answer should be the opposite of the answer to the non-negated question. For example, if one does not have a passport, both "Do you have a passport?" and "Don't you have a passport?" are properly answered with "No", despite apparently asking opposite questions. The Japanese and Korean languages avoid this ambiguity. Answering "No" to the second of these in Japanese or Korean would mean, "I ''do'' have a passport".
A similar ambiguous question in English is "Do you mind if...?" The responder may reply unambiguously "Yes, I do mind," if they do mind, or "No, I don't mind," if they don't, but a simple "No" or "Yes" answer can lead to confusion, as a single "No" can seem like a "Yes, I do mind" (as in "No, please don't do that"), and a "Yes" can seem like a "No, I don't mind" (as in "Yes, go ahead"). An easy way to bypass this confusion would be to ask a non-negative question, such as "Is it all right with you if...?"
Some languages have different particles (for example the
French "''si''", the
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
"''doch''" or the
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
,
Danish
Danish may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark
People
* A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark
* Culture of Denmark
* Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...
, and
Norwegian
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
*Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
*Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including the ...
"''jo''") to answer negative questions (or negative statements) in an affirmative way; they provide a means to express contradiction.
Indirect questions
As well as direct questions (such as ''Where are my keys?''), there also exist
indirect question In grammar, a content clause is a dependent clause that provides content implied or commented upon by an independent clause. The term was coined by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen. They are also known as noun clauses.
English
In English, there are ...
s (also called ''interrogative content clauses''), such as ''where my keys are''. These are used as
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 ...
s in sentences such as "I wonder where my keys are" and "Ask him where my keys are." Indirect questions do not necessarily follow the same rules of grammar as direct questions. For example, in English and some other languages, indirect questions are formed without inversion of subject and verb (compare the word order in "where are they?" and "(I wonder) where they are"). Indirect questions may also be subject to the changes of
tense and other changes that apply generally to
indirect speech
In linguistics, indirect speech (also reported speech or indirect discourse) is a grammatical mechanism for reporting the content of another utterance without directly quoting it. For example, the English sentence ''Jill said she was coming'' i ...
.
Learning
Questions are used from the most elementary stage of learning to original research. In the
scientific method
The scientific method is an empirical method for acquiring knowledge that has characterized the development of science since at least the 17th century (with notable practitioners in previous centuries; see the article history of scientific m ...
, a question often forms the basis of the investigation and can be considered a transition between the observation and hypothesis stages. Students of all ages use questions in their learning of topics, and the skill of having learners creating "investigatable" questions is a central part of
inquiry education Inquiry education (sometimes known as the inquiry method) is a student-centered method of education focused on asking questions. Students are encouraged to ask questions which are meaningful to them, and which do not necessarily have easy answers; t ...
. The
Socratic method
The Socratic method (also known as method of Elenchus, elenctic method, or Socratic debate) is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw ...
of questioning student responses may be used by a teacher to lead the student towards the truth without direct instruction, and also helps students to form logical conclusions.
A widespread and accepted use of questions in an educational context is the assessment of students' knowledge through
exam
An examination (exam or evaluation) or test is an educational assessment intended to measure a test-taker's knowledge, skill, aptitude, physical fitness, or classification in many other topics (e.g., beliefs). A test may be administered verba ...
s.
Origins
Enculturated apes
Kanzi
Kanzi (born October 28, 1980), also known by the lexigram (from the character 太), is a male bonobo who has been the subject of several studies on great ape language. According to Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, a primatologist who has studied the ...
,
Washoe,
Sarah
Sarah (born Sarai) is a biblical matriarch and prophetess, a major figure in Abrahamic religions. While different Abrahamic faiths portray her differently, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all depict her character similarly, as that of a piou ...
and a few others who underwent extensive language training programs (with the use of gestures and other visual forms of communications) successfully learned to ''answer'' quite complex questions and requests (including question words "who", "what", "where"), although so far they have failed to learn how to ''ask questions themselves''. For example,
David and Anne Premack wrote: "Though she
arahunderstood the question, she did not herself ask any questions — unlike the child who asks interminable questions, such as What that? Who making noise? When Daddy come home? Me go Granny's house? Where puppy? Sarah never delayed the departure of her trainer after her lessons by asking where the trainer was going, when she was returning, or anything else". The ability to ask questions is often assessed in relation to comprehension of
syntactic structure
In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
s. It is widely accepted that the first questions are asked by humans during their early infancy, at the pre-syntactic, one word stage of
language development
Language development in humans is a process starting early in life. Infants start without knowing a language, yet by 10 months, babies can distinguish speech sounds and engage in babbling. Some research has shown that the earliest learning begin ...
, with the use of question
intonation.
See also
*
Curiosity
Curiosity (from Latin '' cūriōsitās'', from ''cūriōsus'' "careful, diligent, curious", akin to ''cura'' "care") is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in humans ...
*
Erotetics
Erotetics or erotetic logic is a part of logic, devoted to logical analysis of questions. It is sometimes called the logic of questions and answers.
Overview
The idea was originally developed by Richard Whately. For example, he noted the ambiguity ...
, the logic of questions and answers
*
Inquiry
An inquiry (also spelled as enquiry in British English) is any process that has the aim of augmenting knowledge, resolving doubt, or solving a problem. A theory of inquiry is an account of the various types of inquiry and a treatment of the ...
*
Interrogation
Interrogation (also called questioning) is interviewing as commonly employed by law enforcement officers, military personnel, intelligence agencies, organized crime syndicates, and terrorist organizations with the goal of eliciting useful informa ...
*
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 ...
*
Inquisitive semantics
Inquisitive semantics is a framework in logic and natural language semantics. In inquisitive semantics, the semantic content of a sentence captures both the information that the sentence conveys and the issue that it raises. The framework provides ...
*
Leading question
In common law systems that rely on testimony by witnesses, a leading question is a question that suggests a particular answer and contains information the examiner is looking to have confirmed. The use of leading questions in court to elicit test ...
*
Question under discussion In semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language, a question under discussion (QUD) is a question which the interlocutors in a discourse are attempting to answer. In many formal and computational theories of discourse, the QUD (or an ordered s ...
*
Sentence function
In linguistics, a sentence function refers to a speaker's purpose in uttering a specific sentence, phrase, or clause. Whether a listener is present or not is sometimes irrelevant. It answers the question: "Why has this been said?" The four basic se ...
*
Squiggle operator
In formal semantics, the squiggle operator \sim is an operator which constrains the occurrence of focus. On one common definition, the squiggle operator takes a syntactic argument \alpha and a discourse salient argument C and introduces a presupp ...
* ''
Who Asked the First Question?
Joseph Jordania (Georgian იოსებ ჟორდანია, born February 12, 1954 and also known under the misspelling of Joseph Zhordania) is an Australian–Georgian ethnomusicologist and evolutionary musicologist and professor. He is a ...
'', a book
References
Further reading
* Berti, Enrico. ''Soggetti di responsabilita: questioni di filosofia pratica'', Reggio Emilia, 1993.
* Fieser, James; Lillegard, Norman (eds.). Philosophical questions: readings and interactive guides, 2005.
* Hamblin, C.L. "Questions", in: Paul Edwards (ed.),
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
'' The Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' is one of the major English encyclopedias of philosophy.
The first edition of the encyclopedia was edited by philosopher Paul Edwards (1923–2004), and it was published in two separate printings by Macmillan ...
.
* Muratta Bunsen, Eduardo. "Lo erotico en la pregunta", in: Aletheia 5 (1999), 65–74.
* Stahl, George. "Un développement de la logique des questions", in: Revue Philosophique de la France et de l'Etranger 88 (1963), 293–301.
* Smith, Joseph Wayne. Essays on ultimate questions: critical discussions of the limits of contemporary philosophical inquiry, Aldershot: Avebury, 1988.
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Grammar
Human communication
Interrogative words and phrases
Sentences by type