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An interrogative sentence asks a question and hence ends with a question mark. In speech, it almost universally ends in a rising inflection. Its effort is to try to gather information that is presently unknown to the interrogator, or to seek validation for a preconceived notion held.
An affirmative (positive) form is used to express the validity or truth of a basic assertion, while a negative form expresses its falsity. For example, the affirmative sentence "Joe is here" asserts that it is true that Joe is currently located near the speaker. Conversely, the negative sentence "Joe is not here" asserts that it is not true ...
A small holdover of this is the ability of relative (but not interrogative) whose to refer to non-persons (e.g., the car whose door won't open). All the interrogative pronouns can also be used as relative pronouns, though what is quite limited in its use; [1] see below for more details.
Interrogative sentences are generally divided between yes–no questions, which ask whether or not something is the case (and invite an answer of the yes/no type), and wh-questions, which specify the information being asked about using a word like which, who, how, etc.
Kernel sentences are simple, active, declarative and affirmative sentences. To produce passive, negative, interrogative or complex sentences, one or more optional transformation rules must be applied in a particular order to the kernel sentences.
A major sentence is a regular sentence; it has a subject and a predicate, e.g. "I have a ball." In this sentence, one can change the persons, e.g. "We have a ball." However, a minor sentence is an irregular type of sentence that does not contain a main clause, e.g. "Mary!", "Precisely so.", "Next Tuesday evening after it gets dark."
The term wh-movement stemmed from early generative grammar in the 1960s and 1970s and was a reference to the theory of transformational grammar, in which the interrogative expression always appears in its canonical position in the deep structure of a sentence but can move leftward from that position to the front of the sentence/clause in the ...
A tag question is a construction in which an interrogative element is added to a declarative or an imperative clause. The resulting speech act comprises an assertion paired with a request for confirmation.