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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, [c] and, in Standard English, what and how are mostly excluded from the relative words. [1]: 1053 Most or all of the archaic interrogative words are also relative words. [1]: 1046
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.
The interrogative words who, whom, whose, what and which are interrogative pronouns when used in the place of a noun or noun phrase. In the question Who is the leader?, the interrogative word who is a interrogative pronoun because it stands in the place of the noun or noun phrase the question prompts (e.g. the king or the woman with the crown).
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.
The English relative words are words in English used to mark a clause, noun phrase or preposition phrase as relative.The central relative words in English include who, whom, whose, which, why, and while, as shown in the following examples, each of which has the relative clause in bold:
The interrogative pronouns are who, whom, whose, which and what (also with the suffix -ever). They are chiefly used in interrogative clauses for the speech act of asking questions. [2]: 61 What has impersonal gender, while who, whom and whose have personal gender; [2]: 904 they are used to refer to persons.
The interrogative whom is the direct object of the verb like in each of these examples. The dependency relation between the canonical, empty position and the wh-expression appears to be unbounded, in the sense that there is no upper bound on how deeply embedded within the given sentence the empty position may appear.
An open question (also called a variable question, [1] non-polar question, or special question [4]) 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 such as when, who, or what.