Editing Question (section)

== Definitions ==
Linguistically, a question may be defined on three levels.

At the level of [[semantics]], a question is defined by its ability to establish a set of logically possible answers.<ref name="CGEL">Huddleston, Rodney, and Geoffrey K. Pullum. (2002) ''[[The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language]].'' Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. {{ISBN|0-521-43146-8}}.</ref>

At the level of [[pragmatics]], a question is an [[illocutionary]] category of speech act which seeks to obtain information from the addressee.<ref name="CGEL"/>

At the level of [[syntax]], the [[interrogative]] is a type of clause which is characteristically associated with questions, and defined by certain grammatical rules (such as [[subject–auxiliary inversion]] in English) which vary by language.

Some authors conflate these definitions. While prototypical questions (such as "What is your name?") will satisfy all three definitions, their overlap is not complete. For example "I would like to know your name." satisfies the pragmatic definition, but not the semantic or syntactic ones. Such mismatches of form and function are called [[indirect speech acts]].