Questions tagged [interrogatives]
A function word used to ask a question.
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Conditional and interrogative 'if' in Romance languages
In English, the prototypical word for introducing a conditional antecedent is the word if. This word is homophonous with the interrogative word if used in subordinate interrogative clauses:
If Bertha'...
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Why is the question mark like this in Hebrew language? [closed]
I have tried an interrogative sentence on Google Translate from English to Hebrew and that was "How old are you?"
It translated as what you see in the picture. (of course Hebrew is right to ...
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Is the obligatory omission of tense/aspect/mood marking in polar interrogatives common?
In a language I'm studying for a field methods class, the range of tense/aspect/mood marking on verbs seems to be relatively limited in interrogative clauses. For example, in some verbs, a past tense ...
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Why can interrogatives so often be used-as/made-into intensifier adverbs?
Why does the ability to take normally interrogative words like "what" and "how", and turn them into intensifier adverbs, seem like such a language universal concept?
In Japanese, you can take the ...
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What is it called when words like "what" and "how", aren't acting interrogatively, and aren't relative-pronouns?
What's going on when words like "what" and "how" are used in the following, non-interrogative and relative-pronoun, way?
"Oh, [how] kind of you! My, [what] a nice young man you've become, love!"
Now,...
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What is the morpheme that marks a question called?
When languages have a morpheme attached to the word that makes it a question, such as a suffix, is this called a question suffix, an interrogative, suffix, etc? I don't have much experience in ...
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Interrogatives and Copulas in Malay
In Malay, the wh-phrase in interrogatives remains in-situ, but may move to the left periphery of the clause.
Declarative
Malay: Awak makan ayam
Gloss: You eat chicken
Eng: You eat chicken
Wh-in-...
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What's a good minimal pair to highlight interrogative prosody in English?
I want to show my students how intonation contours in Praat can help identify English interrogatives. An obvious example is "He's coming." vs "He's coming?" -- but perhaps those of you more familiar ...
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Why are only yes/no questions asked with a rising tone?
There is a rule used almost subconsciously by almost all English speakers (and I'm sure it applies to many other languages too) which is that yes/no questions are asked ending with a rising tone, and ...
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Are doubled questions in sign languages arbitrary?
The wh- questions in sign languages crosslinguistically can be seen in clause-initial or clause-final position or in both positions. They can be seen in one of the positions in question sentence, like ...
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Is the position of content questions in sign language due to articulary or syntactic reasons?
In sign languages, the position for content questions is clause-initial, clause-final or both. For instance; TİD (Turkish Sign Language) licenses both.
When there is topicalization in the sentence, ...
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The meaning of "what"?
"What" is defined grammatically as an interrogative pronoun
... used interrogatively in asking for the specification of an identity, quantity, quality, etc. (Wiktionary)
In dictionaries, however, ...
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