Questions tagged [questions]
Questions about the grammar, syntax, intonation, etc of asking and requesting.
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Do you have references on preferred responses for information requests in conversation?
I am doing an analysis of specific predicates in complement clauses in conversation. In the language I am working with (but I suppose this could happen frequently), the predicate 'know' happens much ...
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In general Western languages, how to terminate a phrase, which starts with a question but ends with a statement?
I just entered the following comment on a StackOverflow question:
Is this a purely theoretical question, because sleep 5 without any quotes is working fine?
I have no idea if this sentence is ...
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Across languages, what are the most common syntactic constructions that are used to form alternative questions?
For those who came in late, an alternative question is one that asks the listener to identify a subset of two or more alternatives named in the question. For example:
“Would you like the shrimp ...
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What is the most commonly accepted synonym or synonymous phrase in linguistics for "wh-question"?
The term "wh-question" seems transparent enough for English speakers, but reeks of English language chauvinism. I have heard such questions referred to as "information questions,"...
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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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Word stress and sentence stress questions
Are sentence stress and word stress analyzed seperately? Or are they analyzed all at once? For example "I need to sell my car". Do I find the sentence stress and word stresses seperately or ...
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What is the linguistical terminology for (and if) letters of a given alphabet have(ing) their inherent meaning?
Letters or phonemes.
Letters, like runes according to this article:
https://sonsofvikings.com/apps/fireamp/blogs/history/viking-runes-guide-runic-alphabet-meanings-nordic-celtic-letters
At least that'...
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How common are "How" + infinitive interrogative sentence structures?
In English (or at least varieties with which I am familiar), if you want to ask how to do something, you can't just ask "How to do {something}?"--that's interpreted as a headless relative, ...
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Why do forms of address differ depending of the type of politician?
In English, why do we say Mr. President/Mrs. President but not Mr. King/Mrs. Queen?
My first language is French, and the same principle applies. What I mean is in French, we say Monsieur le Président/...
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Is there a word for a question which is meant to sow doubt?
A rhetorical question is meant to make a statement or point, in the form of a question. But that is different from a question that is asked with the intent to cause doubt. For instance, a lot of ...
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What is it called when an argumentative yes-or-no question has different meanings depending on the answer?
I'm wondering if there's a word for this specific type of informal fallacy.
An example of such a question is "Do black lives matter?", where the questioner specifies the literalness of the ...
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Does grammar allow two questions in one sentence? [closed]
This is not an English-specific question. In Japanese, you might also ask "何時から何時までですか。" Or "nan ji kare nan ji made desu ka", "From what time to what time?" (from Google)...
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Is rising intonation (almost) universally associated with questions across languages, and why?
It seems that in most languages, rising intonation/prosody (towards the end of the sentence) is typically associated with questions. Thus:
How prevalent is this practice, and are there major ...
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What do you call a question to convey curiosity, without expecting a direct answer
I was wondering if there is a name for a question that you say out loud to convey curiosity about a topic, without necessarily expecting a direct answer from those around you. This may be used to ...
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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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Past Simple vs Present Perfect Continuous in questions [closed]
It is my first ask in this forum. I am not sure about proper grammar usage, so I want to ask someone who knows it well.
If I want to ask a person for a duration of time he has worked at the specific ...
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After movement, do theta roles stay the same after wh-movement and verb raising?
The example sentence is "Which purse has Lena bought?" which stems from the statement "Lena has bought which purse". Do the theta roles that bought assigns stay the same after the ...
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Is there a formal term for "long/formal" queries?
So I had a question regarding the types of queries. For example, when we ask a question or do a Google search we could do it in two ways:
"house prices in Boston"
"What are the house prices in Boston?...
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Why isn't this sentence in a passive form? [closed]
I found this sentence in a grammar book for grade 10
Which CD sells the most? A traditional music CD.
I wondered why it isn't in a passive form, or just because it's used in spoken context?
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Positive & Negative Polarity Items, and Interrogatives
There are certain items in some languages that tend to occur largely in negative clauses. In English, one such item might be the word ever:
*I have ever been to Paris.
I haven't ever been to Paris.
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No Semantic Prime For Forming A Question?
"Huh", or some variant of it, is universal.
http://huh.ideophone.org/
Yet, I see no word for forming a question in the list of semantic primes. There's "when/time", "where/place", but no "huh" or "...
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Which friend did he find to study with?
The question is about what happens to phrases during the time of making them questions.
We know that the following sentence is a normal English sentence which is correct grammatically.
He found a ...
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Is either of these meanings of the word "sentence" more conventional?
The Wikipedia article on Generative Grammar states:
Generative grammar is a linguistic theory that regards grammar as a
system of rules that generates exactly those combinations of words
that ...
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Why is it that the wh-word as a subject in the spec position cannot raise over an auxiliary verb like 'did'?
When the question word is the subject of the clause, there is no aux verb, eg 'Who saw you?'. I understand this, but why is 'who did see you?' also correct, with respect to Chomsky's linguistic theory ...
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In construction grammar, is extraction a property of the construction or a separate construction?
I have a question regarding the notion of 'construction' in construction grammar. When a construction, say a coordination or a prepositional phrase or something, allows or doesn't allow extraction, is ...
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"Is there ...?" vs "Does ... have ...?" Yes/No questions
From my understanding (non-native English speaker) "Is there ...?" and "Are there ...?" are generally used for Yes/No question to ask for the existence of something; for example, "Are there vegetarian ...
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DS for a question starting with "Didn't"?
I am trying to draw a derivation for "Didn't the cat eat the mouse?" But I'm confused as to what the deep structure would be. "The cat did not eat the mouse" seems incorrect, since it is stating ...
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Saying words aloud to confirm/disprove accuracy of written language
I had a really interesting thought the other day:
Is oral language dominant/superior in some way to written language?
I bring this up because every time I need to correct or edit my written words (I ...
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Do there exist any languages that use inflection to create questions?
In most (or all?) of Germanic languages questions are created by inversion. E.g.:
"I am here." -> "Am I here?"
As far as I know most of Slavic languages do it simply by adding a word before the ...
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Distal features of wh-words cross-linguistically
My question concerns distal marking on Wh-words. Pronouns like 'this'/'here' and 'that'/'there' show clear marking of the proximal/distal distinction. Wh-words seem to exhibit some similarities to ...
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Question type corpus
I'm looking for a corpus that contains questions and question types.
Like in this article, but they didn't attach any link to their corpus.
http://polibits.gelbukh.com/2009_40/40_01.pdf
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Alternative subject positions in Spanish questions, economy and markedness
The following six Spanish sentences are different versions of the question/different questions corresponding to the unmarked declarative sentence Alguien más podría haber estado usando su ordenador (= ...
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Opposite of "intensifier"?
I really like apples.
I don't really like apples.
In sentences #1, 'really' acts as an intensifier. Using "teacher talk", I would say that 'really' softens the sentence, but I can't think of a ...
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Examples of evolving networks in linguistics
I'm a master student working on networks analysis in general. A network is something that has nodes and there are links between the nodes. Nodes and links could have attributes. An evolving network is ...
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recognizing if a message is question or not?
Although there are appreciable comments and an answer after this question (thank to Robert and Acattle), I am much seeking for a Knowledge branch, (e.g. an "NLP sub-task") than an individual research:
...
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Are there tonal languages which use a rising intonation for questions?
I know that in the case of Mandarin Chinese questions do not end with any kind of rising tone unless the last morpheme in the sentence happens to have a rising tone.
For questions which don't contain ...
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Did Ancient Greek have a rising intonation for questions?
Unlike English, Ancient (e.g. Attic) Greek does not reorder words to formulate a question. The particle "ἆρα" does modify a statement into a question, but is not always present. In that case, I ...
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