Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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
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.
An interrogative pro-form is a pro-form that denotes the (unknown) item in question and may itself fall into any of the above categories. The rules governing allowable syntactic relations between certain pro-forms (notably personal and reflexive/reciprocal pronouns) and their antecedents have been studied in what is called binding theory.
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.
In linguistics, grammatical mood is a grammatical feature of verbs, used for signaling modality. [1] [2]: 181 [3] That is, it is the use of verbal inflections that allow speakers to express their attitude toward what they are saying (for example, a statement of fact, of desire, of command, etc.).
Grammatically productive tag forms are formed in the same way as simple questions, referring back to the verb in the main clause and agreeing in time and person (where the language has such agreement). The tag may include a pronoun, such as in English, or may not, as is the case in Scottish Gaelic. If the rules of forming interrogatives require ...
[2]: 1053 [a] Most or all of the interrogative words that are now more or less archaic are also relative words. [2]: 1046 The denotation of whose as an interrogative word is limited to persons, but the relative whose may denote non-persons, as in a book whose cover is missing. [2]: 1049