Editing Interrogative (section)

===Intonation and punctuation===
Questions may also be indicated by a different [[intonation (linguistics)|intonation]] pattern. This is generally a pattern of rising intonation. It applies particularly to yes–no questions; the use of rising question intonation in yes–no questions has been suggested to be one of the [[linguistic universal|universal]]s of human languages.<ref>Dwight L. Bolinger (ed.) (1972). ''Intonation''. Selected Readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin, p. 314</ref><ref>Allan Cruttenden (1997). ''Intonation''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 155-156</ref> With ''wh''-questions, however, rising intonation is not so commonly used – in English, questions of this type usually do not have such an intonation pattern.

The use of intonation to mark yes–no questions is often combined with the grammatical question marking described in the previous section. For example, in the English sentence "Are you coming?", rising intonation would be expected in addition to the inversion of subject and verb. However it is also possible to indicate a question by intonation alone.<ref>{{cite book|title=Intonation|url=https://archive.org/details/intonation0000crut|url-access=registration|author=Alan Cruttenden|pages=[https://archive.org/details/intonation0000crut/page/155 155]&ndash;156|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1997|isbn=978-0-521-59825-5}}</ref> For example:
*You're coming. (statement, typically spoken with falling intonation)
*You're coming? (question, typically spoken with rising intonation)
A question like this, which has the same form (except for intonation) as a declarative sentence, is called a '''declarative question'''. In some languages this is the only available way of forming yes–no questions – they lack a way of marking such questions grammatically, and thus do so using intonation only. Examples of such languages are [[Italian grammar|Italian]], [[Modern Greek]], [[Portuguese language|Portuguese]], and the [[Jakaltek language]].<ref>{{Citation |last=Bentley |first=Delia |title=Introduction |date=2023 |work=The Cambridge Handbook of Role and Reference Grammar |pages=1–14 |editor-last=Bentley |editor-first=Delia |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-handbook-of-role-and-reference-grammar/introduction/119CAE9F292F5AEF8082D75D8EC6AAA7 |access-date=2024-10-18 |series=Cambridge Handbooks in Language and Linguistics |place=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/9781316418086.001 |isbn=978-1-107-13045-6 |editor2-last=Mairal Usón |editor2-first=Ricardo |editor3-last=Van Valin |editor3-first=Jr, Robert D. |editor4-last=Nakamura |editor4-first=Wataru|url-access=subscription }}</ref> Similarly in [[Spanish grammar|Spanish]], yes–no questions are not distinguished grammatically from statements (although subject–verb inversion takes place in ''wh''-questions).

On the other hand, it is possible for a sentence to be marked grammatically as a question, but to lack the characteristic question intonation. This often indicates a question to which no answer is expected, as with a [[rhetorical question]]. It occurs often in English in [[tag question]]s, as in "It's too late, isn't it?" If the tag question ("isn't it") is spoken with rising intonation, an answer is expected (the speaker is expressing doubt), while if it is spoken with falling intonation, no answer is necessarily expected and no doubt is being expressed.

Sentences can also be marked as questions when they are [[orthography|written down]]. In languages written in [[Latin alphabet|Latin]] or [[Cyrillic script|Cyrillic]], as well as certain other scripts, a [[question mark]] at the end of the sentence identifies it as a question. In Spanish, an additional [[inverted mark]] is placed at the beginning (e.g.{{lang|es|¿Cómo está usted?}}). Question marks are also used in declarative questions, as in the example given above (in this case they are equivalent to the intonation used in speech, being the only indication that the sentence is meant as a question). Question marks are sometimes omitted in rhetorical questions (the sentence given in the previous paragraph, when used in a context where it would be spoken with falling intonation, might be written "It's too late, isn't it.", with no final question mark).