Editing Question (section)

== Question formation ==
Questions may be marked by some combination of word order, [[morphology (linguistics)|morphology]], interrogative words, and [[intonation (linguistics)|intonation]]. Where languages have one or more [[clause]] type characteristically used to form questions, they are called [[interrogative]] clauses. Open and closed questions are generally distinguished grammatically, with the former identified by the use of [[interrogative word]]s.

In [[English grammar|English]], [[German grammar|German]], [[French grammar|French]] and various other (mostly European) languages, both forms of interrogative are subject to an [[inversion (linguistics)|inversion]] of word order between verb and subject. In English, the inversion [[Subject–auxiliary inversion|is limited to auxiliary verbs]], which sometimes necessitates [[Do-support|the addition of the auxiliary ''do'']], as in:

::a. Sam reads the newspaper. {{small|- Statement}}
::b. Does Sam read the newspaper? {{small|- Yes–no question formed using inversion and ''do''-support}}

=== Open questions ===
Open questions are formed by the use of [[interrogative word]]s such as, in English, ''when'', ''what'', or ''which''. These stand in as variables representing the unknown information being sought. They may also combine with other words to form interrogative phrases, such as ''which shoes'' in:

:Which shoes should I wear to the party?

In many languages, including English and most other European languages, the interrogative phrase must (with certain exceptions such as [[echo questions]]) appear at the beginning of the sentence, a phenomenon known as [[wh-fronting]]. In other languages, the interrogative appears in the same position as it would in a corresponding declarative sentence (''in situ'').<ref>{{cite book|chapter=Chapter 93: Position of Interrogative Phrases in Content Questions|chapter-url=http://wals.info/chapter/93|title=World Atlas of Language Structures|author-first1=Matthew S. |author-last1=Dryer|year=2013|editor-last1=Dryer|editor-first1=Matthew S. |editor-last2=Haspelmath|editor-first2=Martin|access-date=15 April 2021}}</ref>

A question may include multiple variables as in:

:Whose gifts are in which boxes?

=== Polar questions ===
Different languages may use different mechanisms to distinguish polar ("yes-no") questions from declarative statements (in addition to the [[question mark]]). English is one of a small number of languages which use word order. Another example is French:

{| class="wikitable"
|+
!
!French
!Translation
|-
!Declarative
|''Vous avez tué un oiseau.''
|You have killed a bird.
|-
! Polar question
|''Avez-vous tué un oiseau?''
|Have you killed a bird?
|}

Cross-linguistically, the most common method of marking a polar question is with an [[interrogative particle]],<ref name="WALS-polar">{{cite web|title=Chapter 116: Polar Questions|url=http://wals.info/chapter/116|work=World Atlas of Language Structures|access-date=15 April 2021}}</ref> such as the [[Japanese language|Japanese]] {{lang|ja|か}} ''ka'', [[Standard Mandarin|Mandarin]] {{lang|zh|吗}} ''ma'' and [[Polish grammar|Polish]] ''czy''.

Other languages use verbal morphology, such as the ''-n'' verbal postfix in the [[Tunica language]].

Of the languages examined in the [[World Atlas of Language Structures]], only one, [[Atatláhuca–San Miguel Mixtec]], was found to have no distinction between declaratives and polar questions.<ref name="WALS-polar"/>

==== Intonation ====
Most languages have an intonational pattern which is characteristic of questions (often involving a raised pitch at the end, as in English).

In some languages, such as [[Italian grammar|Italian]], intonation is the sole distinction.{{citation needed|date=June 2021}}

In some languages, such as English, or Russian, a [[rising declarative]] is a sentence which is syntactically declarative but is understood as a question by the use of a rising intonation. For example, "You're not using this?"

On the other hand, there are English dialects (Southern Californian English, New Zealand English) in which rising declaratives (the "[[uptalk]]") do not constitute questions.<ref>[[Paul Warren (professor)|Paul Warren]]<!--https://people.wgtn.ac.nz/Paul.Warren--> (2017) "The interpretation of prosodic variability in the context of accompanying sociophonetic cues", Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology, 8(1), 11. {{doi|10.5334/labphon.92}} (Paper presented at the Third Experimental and Theoretical Approaches to Prosody workshop)

* More on uptalk of this author: Paul Warren, ''Uptalk: the phenomenon of rising intonation'', Cambridge University Press. 2016, {{ISBN|978-1107123854}} (hardcover), ([https://www.amazon.com/Uptalk-Phenomenon-Intonation-Paul-Warren-ebook/dp/B017205HLC kindle edition])</ref> However it is established that in English [[Rising declarative|there is a distinction]] between ''assertive'' rising declaratives and ''inquisitive'' rising declaratives, distinguished by their [[prosody (linguistics)|prosody]].

==== Request for confirmation and speaker presupposition ====
Questions may be phrased as a request for confirmation for a statement the interrogator already believes to be true.

A [[tag question]] is a polar question formed by the addition of an interrogative fragment (the "tag") to a (typically declarative) clause. For example:

:You're John, {{underline|aren't you?}}
:Let's have a drink, {{underline|shall we?}}
:You remembered the eggs, {{underline|right?}}

This form may incorporate speaker's [[presupposition]] when it constitutes a [[complex question]].
Consider a statement
:(A) Somebody killed the cat
and several questions related to it.
:(B) John killed the cat, did he?  (tag question)
:(C) Was it John who killed the cat?
As compared with:
:(D) Who killed the cat?
Unlike (B), questions (C) and (D) incorporate a presupposition that somebody killed the cat.

Question (C) indicates speaker's commitment to the truth of the statement that somebody killed the cat, but no commitment as to whether John did it or did not.<ref name="saltpet">[[Stanley Peters]], "Speaker commitments: Presupposition", ''Proceedings of the Semantics and Linguistic Theory Conference (SALT)'' 26: 1083–1098, 2016, ([https://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/SALT/article/download/26.1083/3703 (download PDF)])</ref>

=== Punctuation ===
In languages written in [[Latin alphabet|Latin]], [[Cyrillic script|Cyrillic]] or certain other scripts, a [[question mark]] at the end of a sentence identifies questions in writing. As with intonation, this feature is not restricted to sentences having the grammatical form of questions – it may also indicate a sentence's [[pragmatics|pragmatic]] function.

In [[Spanish language|Spanish]] an additional [[¿|inverted mark]] is placed at the beginning: ''¿Cómo está usted?'' "How are you?". An uncommon variant of the question mark is the [[interrobang]] (‽), which combines the function of the question mark and the [[exclamation mark]].