A question may be either a linguistic expression used to make a request for information, or else the request itself made by such an expression. This information may be provided with an answer.
Questions are normally put forward or asked using interrogative sentences. However they can also be formed by imperative sentences, which normally express commands: "Tell me what two plus two is"; conversely, some expressions, such as "Would you pass the salt?", have the grammatical form of questions but actually function as requests for action, not for answers, making them allofunctional. (A phrase such as this could, theoretically, also be viewed not merely as a request but as an observation of the other person's desire to comply with the request given.)
Read more about Question: Varieties of Questions, Grammar, Questions and Answers, Learning, Philosophical Questions, Origins of Questioning Behavior
Famous quotes containing the word question:
“One cannot come back too often to the question what is knowledge and to the answer knowledge is what one knows.... Knowledge is the thing you know and how can you know more than you do know.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The world is filled with the proverbs and acts and winkings of a base prudence, which is a devotion to matter, as if we possessed no other faculties than the palate, the nose, the touch, the eye and ear; a prudence which adores the Rule of Three, which never subscribes, which never gives, which seldom lends, and asks but one question of any project,—Will it bake bread?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“O.J. Berman: Well, answer the question now. Is she or isn’t she?
Paul: Is she or isn’t she what?
O.J. Berman: A phony.
Paul. I don’t know. I don’t think so.
O.J. Berman: You don’t think so, huh? Well, you’re wrong. She is. But on the other hand, you’re right. Because she’s a real phony.”
—George Axelrod (b. 1922)